The Daily News

1  The End.

2  That was today’s headline in the Merc News.

3  The End.

4  The headline referred to the end to the war in Iraq.

5   To a lot of vets, I’ll bet that was a moment. Most non-military people probably looked at that, and then to the ads for Christmas deals.

6    To a soldier, or to relatives and friends of soldiers, it is probably a bittersweet headline, but a meaningful headline.

7    It was a sweet, short headline, and maybe it should be an understated thing.

8    4,487 U.S. lives lost. 32,226 wounded in action.

9     And it isn’t The End to the 4,000 troops still over there. Most of these will be out by December 31. I prayed for them this morning.

10   Give it all a bit of thought on this day.

11   Moving on, Part the First: Well, this is the last DN of 2011, and comes on a morning of extreme deadlines. My goal was to have all my grades done by 12:50 today, but I now don’t see it happening.

12    I forgot about an evaluation I had to write for our Assistant Principal. I’ve reached a point where I no longer have to be visited by an administrator, and where I can create a project and then report on it.

13    I knew I had to get that done this week, but in the midst of the blizzard of papers and finals and all, it slipped my mind. So I put everything else aside yesterday and attacked that project head-on.

14    I tried to retrieve an email I had sent to her, and did, but it didn’t have the attachment I had sent when I originally began the project.

15    The email had a document attached, but when my laptop crashed, the doc was lost. The importance of this is that it had all of my original information on it, as well as all of the California Department of Education Standards I hit when I did the project in October.

16   I didn’t really want to write her, because she is more overworked than am I, and asking her to dig for that document would have been ludicrous.

17   I began from scratch, worked all afternoon yesterday, and then awakened last night at 3:30 a.m. and finished it up.

18   The good news is that it was about my ghost unit, and the Heidi stories that worked famously this year, almost better than ever.

19    I actually felt that I wanted that unit to be “immortalized” in my personal file, or wherever these evaluations go. It is always an amazing couple of days, and this year gave extra credit to students who brought in cultural stories, or stories from primary sources: parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, etc.

20    The results were fairly remarkable. I had stories from Vietnam, Mexico, India, Japan, Germany, Italy, Africa, the Philippines, Scotland, and numerous other countries. They were much better than time spent listening to the same old stuff about the Sunnyvale Toys R Us, Chuck E. Cheese, the Winchester Mystery House, and on and on.

21    Many of the stories were told in our darkened Theater, with lighting from our Drama Department’s fall production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible working perfectly with the darkness, and with the flashlights on the faces of the students.

22    I just thought it would be fun to have that unit written out on paper. My “evaluation” is actually a sort of “How to” model, and I’m just glad that I wrote it and saved it, because it is really a fun and sometimes it is an electrifying time for my students. It is also the oldest unit I’ve ever used, dating back to my student teacher days.

23   It is now officially a “classic”.

24   It feels nice that I did that, and mailed it off this morning at around six.

25   And so this is Christmas.

26    I’m up against a deadline, which would only make perfect sense, since I’ve been up against enormous deadlines all year.

27    Santa already came to me. I’ve mentioned it a few times, but how, at Christmas, did I suddenly get a windfall of money if their isn’t a Santa?

28    Simple.

29    There is a Santa.

30     I hope you’ve been nice. I also hope you’ve been naughty. You gotta live a little.

31     Santa came to me this year. I’ve been naughty AND nice, so maybe the rules are changing!

32      I hope he finds you and yours. It happens in good deeds, or in good moments during all the madness. Someone will stop you and make you smile. You do the same, and then we could spread that through the coming days.

33     And so this is Christmas.

34      Have a happy holiday, and I’ll see you when we get back.

35      In the meantime…

36      Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

    The Daily News

1    Had an interesting talk with a couple of teachers yesterday.

2    I walked into the hallway of our building, looked at another teacher who had the same two hours of complete quiet due to finals, and I said, “GOD I love finals!”

3    Eventually another teacher came up, looking as though he had just seen the burning bush.

4    The deal about finals is that we finally have time to get things into the gradebook, on company time. Students take finals quite seriously, so it is extremely quiet in the classroom. I had time not only to correct papers, but to keep them organized as well.

5    Of course, the second I finished correcting the last paper for my fifth period class, I looked over to “The Tub” (a huge plastic container I use to collect all this stuff) and it had filled with brand spanking new three-hundred word essays.

6    I wasn’t too concerned about those because I told the students I was going to do a “cursory” job on those just to make sure they jumped through their last hoop of the semester.  Still, students take finals really seriously, almost as though they are programmed to do so, which they are.

7    The word “FINAL” at the top of the prompt sheet can be quite intimidating and sobering. For whatever reason, larger assignments will never be taken as seriously as “FINAL”. It’s psychological. This is the time of year when students destroy their brain cells with “all-nighters”, which I consider somewhat stupid.

8    An “all-nighter” is a street brag, like going to “Vegas, baby!” A smart student knows how to pace sleeping times, studying times, napping times, re-awakening times, and then going-back-to-sleep times. Doing a literal “all-nighter” will most certainly lead to dead brain cells and a complete lack of concentration on a tough test.

9   I had a nice talk with one of my absolute best students yesterday. She stayed in after school to finish her essay. I told her she could just take it home, but she wanted to compete the task.

10   I wasn’t getting out any time soon, as I needed to keep grading, and to organize all the paper I had. So it was a perfect set-up. After around forty-five minutes or so, I glanced over, and saw her erasing vigorously.

11   She had eraser crumbs all over her desk, and kept whisking them on to the floor, a sign that she was taking my final REALLY seriously. She’s not a drama queen or anything, just a bit of a perfectionist.

12   My “FINAL” is actually pretty easy. The students simply have to write a 300-word essay on one of eight topics. They get a “plus” if it one of the six or seven most outstanding finals of the day. A “plus” means that their final semester grade will go up a third. This works well for a student with eighty-nine percent, but really doesn’t do much for someone who already has an A+, which this girl has.

13   A student could also receive a check, which means they did the job, jumped through the last hoop, and protected their semester grade.

14    Or a student could receive a minus, which means they didn’t do the final, and that their semester grade would go down a third. No student EVER opts for a minus. Why would you?

15   A lot of students just choose safely to do a five-paragraph essay. It’s a template, and pretty difficult to screw up.

16    That was really all this student had to do, but you would have thought my “FINAL” was eighty percent of her grade.

17    So there we were. It was actually pretty peaceful, and I got truckloads of work done. We both finished almost at the same time. I had all my stuff alphabetized and separated by class. I color-coded paper clips so that each class had its own color. I was able to check and double-check the accuracy of the grades.

18   She finished, wrote a final copy that was neat, and clean as a whistle. She cleaned her desk one more time, and finally took a deep sigh, and gave a slight shrug of the shoulders.

19   I asked which final will be her toughest, and she said, “Probably AP World.” I asked why she spent so much time on my “FINAL” when she could safely have knocked off a five-paragraph essay in a half hour.

20   Her response: “I have always worked as hard as I could to get straight A’s, even in grammar school. Several of my teachers wrote my parents that I work too hard, and that I over-work. I can’t help it; it’s just who I am.”

21   I chuckled. “Type A,” I remarked. She knew exactly what Type A meant. “I’m the same way,” I said. “Only I didn’t really hit that mark ’til I got up here.”

22   I told her how last year, I wanted to out-do every English 1A teacher in the school. Instead of reading the sample books of The Odyssey, for example, I wanted to bring all twenty-four or twenty-five books to the class. That’s about thirteen or fourteen more chapters than any other teacher might attempt. It meant that I had to memorize the sequence of events of each “book”  so that each day I could tell the story in as short a period of time as was possible. I’m generally a pretty good storyteller.

23   Since The Odyssey has so many predictions in it, quite a Greek thing, I had to tell a series of tales about predictions, and then the fulfillment of those predictions. If you know anything about the Greeks, it’s that any time a prophet or oracle predicts something, it’s a safe bet that it will come true one-hundred percent of the time.

24  I told her of a time when I was right in the middle of my fifth period class, and right in the middle of telling the story, when my mind went completely blank. I looked everywhere for help: the ceiling, the door, the ears and braces to whom I was telling the story, and I couldn’t remember if I was in the predicting part of the story, or the inevitable fulfillment of the prediciton.

25   The students began laughing, because I must have looked like a moron. It just wouldn’t come to me. I eventually reined it back in, but I went home completely mortified that day. It ruined my afternoon and evening.

26   That was certainly one of the drawbacks of being a “Type A” personality.

27    She laughed, and totally understood. It was a nice moment in the year, because here was a Type A teacher conversing with a Type A student. It was almost as though we both had the same personality disorder. We talked for a second in the parking lot, and then parted ways. It was a relaxing moment in the lives of two absolute Type A’s.

28    I never thought of myself in those terms, and I think I came to realize that not that many people are wired that way. It was somewhat refreshing to see that there are others.

29    So even though we were out at 12:50, I don’t think we got out ’til around 3. And I knew that she had to go home and study for World History, one of the toughest classes in the school, and that I had to go home and grade at least one class set of essays.

30   So I read and read and read, made a bit of a dent, and then conked out at around eight.

31    Today I have just one class, and one more class set of papers to finish by tomorrow. Fortunately, it’s a morning class, so I should be out of there by 10:30. Today might just be the day that I turn the corner on all these papers.

32   My goal is not to have any papers or schoolwork during the Christmas break, which begins Friday afternoon and runs through New Years.

33   This means at least two more days of Type A behavior, as well as giving a few pluses, a few checks, and no minuses.

34    Sounds like a plan.

35  

36    Have a wonderful day.

37    Thanks go out to Trinh Le for the cartoons. They’re perfect.

38    Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

  The Daily News

1   The field has been lined; the stadium is filling up, and it is game on. Finals for the next three days.

2    Actually, the finals are really on the students. I gave them some light busy work, which I affectionately now call Bud Light. and called each student with missing work to my desk to see if they could turn in anything missing.

3    This is an extremely generous thing to do, and an extremely stupid thing to do. I got at least twenty new papers to grade, all because they were unconscious when the work was to be turned in.

4    It’s astounding to me how some students could forget to turn stuff in. I stamp their work the day it is due, and an unbelievable amount of work that WAS done was simply not turned in.

5    Next semester I won’t be so nice, because I created more work for myself by being excessively forgiving. But I know that a lot of these guys are multi-tasking to the point of senility. Some teachers are ridiculous with their expectations, and it causes my class to become less significant.

6    It’s always been my contention that “rigorous” teachers are insecure people on a psychological power trip. We have a teacher that gives tons of chapters of study each night and then gives ridiculously detailed tests at least once a week.

7    As a colleague, I don’t often criticize, but a couple of teachers just pound the students with almost unethical demands. It is suggested somewhere in the ESUHSD that teachers should limit homework to a half-hour a night. I can’t remember where I read that, but it makes perfect sense, if you ask me.

8    Homework should NEVER require two or three hours of the students’ time. To me, that is unconscionable, and an insult to the teachers who are sane. It is also abusively cruel to students who are involved in clubs, activities, sports, music, etc.

9    I guess their families and friends aren’t important.

10  If each teacher gives a half hour a night, the students STILL have two to three hours of homework a night.

11   So if even two teachers give two to three hours of homework a night just to prove that they are “rigorous”, the students become zombies, sleep in class, do the least they can in your class so they could bow to the queens and kings who declare themselves infallible.

12   We have them; YB had them, and every school has them. To me they are egomaniacal cretins who should be in show business or politics if they need so much “admiration”.

13   Dude.

14   Get out of the business.

15    What irks me is that I have often been accused (by other teachers) of “spoon-feeding” or of making things way too easy for students.

16    Huh?

17    All I do is think up ways to keep the brighter lights completely engaged and to reach the students who might be “slow of study”. I wasn’t the smartest guy in the world when I was a teenager. I was great in English, but just okay in a lot of other subjects.

18    Part of it was my organizational skills, which consisted of my math homework in my back left pocket of my pants, my science homework in the right pocket of my pants, my social studies stuff in a shirt pocket, and my English homework neatly organized in my clean binder.

19   I remember distincly going up to teachers and questioning my grades, only to have them open their gradebook and show me the stuff I had missing. I couldn’t remember whether I did the assignments or not, and I had no reason to think that the teacher might have screwed up.

20   Maybe that’s why I’m a bit sympathetic with students turning in late work. It it’s stamped, it means it was done on time. I don’t always collect the work the same day it is due, so the student might have been absent when I collected it.

21   And every couple of weeks I tell them to hand in anything with a stamp. I also have make-up vocabulary at lunch every single Thursday. And student STILL don’t remember, or forget to come in to take a make-up test.

22   So next semester I won’t be quite as kind. It’s just that I see a LOT of students who are getting juked by the “rigorous” teachers, and their ability to multi-task has been completely distorted. They are going a hundred miles an hour every which way. They look absolutely like zombies.

23   And people will say, “Well, they have to learn responsibility.”

24    I don’t teach responsibility. I teach English.

25    It’s funny, because I’m often asked by people who find out I’m a teacher, “What do you teach?”

26    My answer is always this: “Students.” It’s never smart-alecky or anything, and most people love the answer.

27    I love the answer too, because it is exactly how I feel. The students are my priority. My ego or whatever is way down the list. I simply want my students to learn the subject I have been hired to teach. I believe I do that, and do it on a daily basis.

28   My classrooms have always been a bit of a safe haven for students who get abused daily by tyrants and megalomaniacs. I never mention other teachers to them, nor do I ever criticize other teachers or their methods.

29   But I’m not afraid to post this publicly, since I am using no names.

30    And really? I really wish more teachers would teach students.

31   They would be much happier with their lives.

32    I gottago. It’s the morning of, and the field has been lined; the stadium is filling up.

33   Game on.

34    Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

  The Daily News

1   How come the headlines on Google, AOL, Yahoo!, etc. often don’t match up with those in the Merc News?

2   The web places tend to sensationalize everything. Almost ever other day, for instance, they have a picture of some celebrity chick wearing a “shocking” or a “stunning” dress. Who cares?

3   Or some sports’ millionaire yammers about how upset he is about something.

4   They may have “Five foods that could kill you today.” But rather than listing them, you have to go to their site and watch a bunch of junk TV. Suppose you grab one of those foods right before you watch the junk TV thingy, and keel over. O, the irony.

5   I can’t even hide from the Republican circus. Every other day I read something about Perry being a gay basher, or just anything about some guy whose parents named him “Mitt”. I wouldn’t name my dog “Mitt”.

6   The Merc News, on the other hand, has a front page piece on how the Occupy movement is going to blockade all the ports from Southern Cali all the way up to Anchorage. It will also have news about Intel, and about Brown’s tax hike.

7   Granted, those are West Coast news stories, but they tend not to repeat the same patterns that we see on the Web.

8    Every couple of days AOL throws up a picture of some psycho killer with frizzy hair and a lame brain look on his face. The trouble with that is that it won’t go away for like five days.

9     Or in the upper right-hand corner they’ll have a picture of a drooly old man who turns his head and stares at you. I think they’re trying to sell you on some insurance company or something, but it is borderline scary.

10   Obviously not much going on this Tuesday.

11   And as I have been reporting for the past couple of weeks, no news is always good news.

12   Moving on, Part the First: We’re gathering and preparing for finals this week, and I have been desperately trying to stay WAY ahead of my papers, so that during our Christmas break, which begins Friday afternoon, I’ll not have to spend any time worrying about school.

13   I talked with a teacher friend briefly about this yesterday, and she said that it is ridiculous how much grading we do nowadays.

14   I pointed out that with class sizes increasing three students per class, we now have fifteen to to twenty more students than ever before. That’s a half to two-thirds of another class, and it is also fifteen to twenty more papers to grade each assignment.

15   A lot of teachers haven’t put that together yet. I remember that thirty was as high a class count for an English class that we needed; even thirty-one or thirty-two would make a difference in class noise.

16   When when class sizes increased, so did the noise level, as well as the settle-down factor. It wasn’t much, but it is noticeable. If a teacher has a small classroom with desk shortages, students can now be found sitting on the floor. Don’t get me wrong; some students insist on sitting on the floor anyway.

17    But the largest impact has certainly been on the paper chase. It keeps teachers from seeing family and friends. Outsiders say, “Well, don’t assign as much work.”

18 

19   Each six weeks we have to justify a grade. We absolutely need to give at least three and maybe four assignments a week. When you start doing the numbers, it becomes a blizzard of papers, of organizing, and of constantly sitting around grading things in order to meet deadlines.

20   I know one teacher who keeps her papers on her car seat, and grades things at stoplights.

21   So right now, I’m on a mission to knock all of my papers out by Friday. I’ve been on it for weeks now, spent Saturday from ten in the morning until five in the afternoon reading essays.

22   It has been difficult to do anything but grade papers and then conk out. We also have to plan each day, run off materials because our books don’t cover grammar, for example, as well as books we might buy on Amazon. I bought myself a copy of Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition for ten bucks, and it has been a Godsend to my students. But I spend a lot of afternoons in the copy room hoping the machines don’t jam.

23   Believe it or not, I’m not really complaining, just explaining why some of the DN’s have been a tad short lately, or have had cut/paste news. I’m finding I have less and less time to do this.

24    Earlier in the year I would go to sleep at eight or nine and awaken in the middle of the night to do this. Lately, however, I have been sleeping wonderfully through the night, but when I awaken in the morning, I’m finding that I’m beginning to do rush jobs, which is no fun, because the DN is fun to write each day.

25    I’ve also often said that I don’t really write this drivel. It’s always like automatic writing, which is why I find myself chuckling at things like pictures of questioning dogs, or monster posters, and people screaming in terror.

26    So I’ve got to keep today’s DN a little short.

27   But I have made huge inroads on the paper chase. I gave group work this past week, and canceled a vocabulary lesson. The papers didn’t come in, and instead of a hundred-fifty times three assignments, I’m collecting only six papers per class. The math suddenly leans a bit more in my favor.

28   I’m generating almost no paperwork while having time to pound down the huge workload I have right now.

29    But I’m up against the wall this morning trying to get the DN out AND to make it to school on time!

30    So sorry about the grousing; it wasn’t really grousing, it was excuse-making.

31    Anyway, call it what you will, I have to put this baby to bed.

32    See you tomorrow. Drive safely; there’s black ice and freezing temps out there, or so I’ve been told.

33     Catch you on the reebz.

34     Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

The Daily News

1   Sorry about no DN on Friday. I was a tad late getting out of the chute, and decided I would write the DN at school.

2   <basketball buzzer>

3   The firewall prevented me from sending anything out, and after I got home, I thought that I had gotten a DN off. I wrote several at school, even put it up on Word, but the firewall kept erasing it. In the back of my mind, I had mailed one off.

4   I was grading papers ’til around five in the afternoon, and then went out to watch our version of Christmas-in-the-Park.

5   By the time I got home, I had a ton of papers to grade, and forgot that I never really shot off a DN.

6    I’m still coming off yet more paper-grading, so I’m not really sure what the heck is going on these days.There’s a rumor that the forty-niners somehow lost to Arizona, which really sucks, because Arizona is becoming one of the worst states in the nation politically.

7   And yes, I’m quite fine in saying that. Stooges vote in that state. Yes, stooges vote in our state too, but in a more fashionably liberal sense.

8    <what?omg! he said the “L” word!>

9    Yes he did.

10   Moving on, Part the First: Am I the only guy who is outraged that KGO radio massacreed any talk-show host who was the slightest bit liberal? Or even weirder, conservative?

11   I believe we should have a massive boycott of that station, which recently was under new management.

12   Cumulus Media took over these guys, and has now set a dangerous precedent of media control. Well, the precedent was established long ago, but a station as powerful as KGO? Outrageous.

13    As far as I know, the following news talk folks have been given a stark pink slip: Gene Burns, Gil Gross, the immortal Ray Taliaferro, and John Rothmann. The hatchet is also coming down on Chico grad Bill Wattenburg, a staunch conservative, as well as fitness guru Joanie Greggains.

14   I refuse to listen to KGO now. They want more news, less talk. Seriously?

15   The news is now controlled in the Bay Area. Liberal/Conservative/Intellectual talk on today’s news is now kaput. I don’t care if you are a liberal, a conservative, a fascist, a communist, an atheist, a health nut, or a gay rights activist: The issue is that equal debate on major issues is officially a thing of the past in the Bay Area. At least KGO posed that it was giving equal measure to all issues, and encouraged healthy debate, and sometimes abuse from hosts to callers. But at least issues were debated.

16   Talk radio is now muzzled and controlled by corporate giants. The thought police have drawn a line in the sand, and nobody has stepped up to call them on this.

17   People who worked faithfully for years on that station are now out of a job. Their families are probably devastated.

18   And nobody has said a word about this. I saw a mini-movement on Facebook, but I really think a huge boycott of that station is in perfect order. I don’t start boycotts, but I do encourage them.

19   No matter where you are politically, you used to be able to tune  in and hear all sides of all issues.

20    You will now get slanted news, and it is my feeling that it will slant to the right.

21    Free thought is officially a thing of the past.

22    Who controls the present controls the  future.

24    Wow.

25    Maybe when Christmas hits I might be able to be a bit more active on this grizzly massacre.

26    Meanwhile, I urge everybody walking around to boycott KGO San Francisco.

27     Oh, theif angle is this: “We’re losing money.”

28    REALLY???

29    Wait ’til people boycott you.

30    Whew.

31    Aight.

32    Well, it’s been a lonnnnng weekend, and the massacre of human thought somehow has increased.

33     Let’s all band to fight this ridiculous lie.

34     I’ll try to stay on it.

35      Just boycott KGO radio San Francisco.

36      Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/barrington

Ingnorance is Strength.

Slavery is Freedom.

War is Peace.

Here the “official” story from December 3:

KGO Radio plans immediate shift to news-oriented format

  The Daily News

1   I was asked last night who my fave musician is.

2   Wow.

3   Loaded question. At the moment?

4   How would you answer that?

5   Right now, in the moment?

6   Keith Richards.

7   It took some thought, I must say.

8    But for now? Keith.

9    I have this marvelous book I got last Christmas. It is called What Would Keith Richards Do?

10  The author is Jessica Pallington West.

11  The entire book is based on the wisdom of Keith Richards.

12   She fills the book with what I shall define as “Keithisms”.

13   Please allow me to introduce some of these wonderful life witticisms by the inimatable Keith. The following quotes come from the mouth of a twenty-first century avatar:

14   “It’s good to see you. In fact, it’s good to see anyone.”

15   “It’s the search that’s important… it doesn’t matter if you’re successful or famous… it’s that nobody picks up on it. That’s the world’s greatest epitaph: ‘Rest in peace–he passed it on.’ “

16   “All the crap you go through, I mean, how bad is it, really?”

17   “Love wears a white Stetson.”

18   “I went to art school, which means I don’t know shit about art but I know how to advertise.”

19   “I am the next Mickey Mouse–look out.”

20   ”The greats are the greats. They know who they are.”

21   ”Everybody should be born with a guitar–there’d be far less suicides.”

22    “You’ve got to be looking forward to something.”

23   “I feel very hopeful about the future. I find it all very enjoyable with a few peak surprises thrown in.”

24   “I don’t agree with the saying, ‘You can count your real friends on one hand.’ It that’s so, then you ain’t farming the right acres, because frinds are everywhere.”

25   “You can’t accuse me of anything I haven’t already confessed to.”

26   “Some things get better with age. Like me.”

27   “Getting old is a fascinating thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.”

28   That’s it. Short stack.

29   Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

The Daily News

1   I cut my finger on a can of straw mushrooms last night, and there were no Band-Aids big enough to put over the cut.

2   It was a horrific scene, albeit funny.

3   The entire moment became a cartoon. I was like Yosemite Sam applying immediate pressure to the wound. When this didn’t work, I panicked, and tried toilet tissue,

4   This worked for a bit, but when it kept bleeding through, I jumped in the air yelling, “Dag-nabbit!”

5   I took huge pieces of paper towels and rolled them around the injury, causing a bandage that expanded my finger to six times its height and three-inches in width at the top.

6   All I could think of was how much my life had turned into a cartoon.

7   Well, cooler heads prevailed. Helene thought a small Band -Aid and some gauze might just be the trick. Isn’t that just like a woman? Who woulda thunk practicality might be the right medicine? Well, it still looked cartoony, but in a much less cartoony way, if that makes any sense,

8   I just decided to call it a night fairly early. I had a long day of lecturing, so I had already felt like something the cat drug in when I got home. My voice had run out of gas at the end if my last period, and all I wanted to do was to become a couch potato.

9   I was going to cook a mild dinner of shrimp with lobster sauce when the tip of the can of straw mushrooms lit up the night.

10  I wound up making a lousy batch. About a month ago I made the same dish and it was wonderful. The difference? Ten fingers instead of nine.

11  To my idiotic credit, after I got the smaller gauze bandage on my finger, I insisted on returning to my cooking. I have this moronic work ethic that forces me to finish every project I work on.

12  My finger could well  have fallen off with me turning blue, and I would want to finish my recipe rather than going to emergency, which was also suggested and rejected.

13   My experiences in going to emergency is that they don’t see emergencies as their emergency. They always have bigger fish to fry, and aren’t afraid to let you sit in an “emergency” room for six or seven hours.

14   It actually makes sense to me. I walk in with a cartoon finger, and they tell me to sit in the Toon area.

15   So there I would be with Yosemite Sam and Roger Rabbit, and a host of forest animals.

16   That image actually struck me when I thought of going into emergency. I then looked at my big, dorky finger and decided, “Nah.”

17   The fun part was that after I ate about three spoonfuls of the worst dinner ever, I went into a cleaning mode, with my Ha-UGE index finger up in the air.

18   Ever try washing dishes with a homemade bandage on? It’s next to impossible. But knew I owed it to my family, to my country, and to myself. Cleanliness is, as they say.

19   It was somewhat like the Sorceror’s Apprentice, only I did all the work. The music played, and my life last night was a vast cartoon, and quite entertaining. No brooms bearing buckets, but quite a sight anyway.

20   I kept laughing at how preposterous it all was. All I wanted to do was to come home, make some cheap eats, and veg out on some football, just like all the rest of the America.

21   <basketball buzzer>

22   After a cursory attempt at cleaning plates, I finally found my way to the couch and realized I couldn’t really even operate the remote. So I stared at my ha-UGE finger once more, and finally decided it was time to close my eyes and put the day behind me.

23  Naturally, I awakened at 3 a.m., looked over my lesson plan, and felt okay with it.

24   I then went to write today’s DN.

25   I looked, and realized that my laptop was STILL in the shop (it crashed right after Thanksgiving). Slow roll. So I went into the “office” and turned on my desktop. It always makes this huge “oh-ROOOOO!” when it goes on.

26   I didn’t turn the lamp on because I didn’t want to wake the dog, who would naturally think it was time to get up. I knew instinctively that she would demand breakfast, demand going out in the yard to chase shadows and leaves, and then demand my attention through incessant barking for ten minutes afterward. Not worth it; not worth turning on the lamp.

27   So I just pushed the “oh-R00000!” button and the computer lit up the room.

28   It also lit up my gigantic, white finger.

29   So today’s DN is nothing short of a miracle. My middle finger came in and played a great back-up game for me, although it insisted on making each period a comma.

30   I’m not so certain of my editing either, because this was done mid-morning with little light and a bunch of gauze wrapped around my finger, which appears clean and white.

31   I opened the fridge just to check and make sure that the horrid dinner concoction was properly stored. I should have stored it in the garbage disposal.

32   So that’s it. This is my midnight-to-four ride.

33    Once again, no news.

34   Have an enjoyable day. Hope you got a laugh or two out of the whole operation. Or non-op cartoon. 

35   AnywayZ.

36   Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

The Daily News

1  It’s all about the NINERS today!!!

2  I am amazed and know not what to say.

3  I knew going in that yesterday was going to be a blowout.

4  I didn’t expect a shutout.

5   We knew going in that Frank Gore was going to emerge as the franchises all-time rushing leader.

6   Our awesome kicker, David Aikers had a record-busting 32 field goals this year.

7   I didn’t like Patrick Willis going down, but his replacement, Larry Grant, wound up with six tackles and a sack.

8   Amazing defensive game, and amazing defensive season.

9   A little over a year ago I was calling for Singletary and QB Alex Smith to take their dog-and-pony show elsewhere. I was right about Singletary. Clearly one of the worst coaches in NFL history.

10  As for Alex? I’m going to have to go with the stats.

11   According to the Merc News’ Cam Inman, Alex has done okay. Here is Inman:

Since Dec 1, 2010 Smith has goe 8-1 at home. He is 145 for 234 for 1,964 yards with 16 touchdowns, three interceptions, and a 105.4 passer rating during that stretch.

12   The difference?

13   Coaching. I said it all along. I actually never thought Smith would amount to anything, to be honest. He didn’t have the instincts. He couldn’t go vertical, and he became really excellent at rolling to the right and heaving the ball out of bounds.

14   Now  he hits guys right in the numbers and they don’t catch the ball. And that is improving at an unbelievable rate.

15   Jim Harbaugh has been an immense presence, everything Singletary  wanted to be but couldn’t.

16   Any coach who could slip away from a Gatorade drenching has the instincts of a cat.

17   I could go on. This defense is so real that they have allowed the fewest points of any defense in the NFL.

18   I don’t want to go on and on, because it will take all morning, and I just haven’t the time, but right now I want to raise a glass to the the 2011 San Francisco 49ers. I heard Candlestick thundering with “GO! NINERS! GO! NINERS!” right through my teevee.

19   I even didn’t mind that the fans did the Wave, a Candlestick no-no! But they were clearly a younger crowd, and lost in the madness of what it used to be like every single week.

20  That may happen again, and in our own back yard.

21   Meanwhile, it was nice to see Candlestick rocking the way it knows how to rock.

22   So that’s it for this morning. Even non-Niner fans have to give it to them. They are a fun, tough, hard-hitting team.

23   And they may start surprising a LOT of other teams.

24   A thunderingly wonderful win, and an amazingly awesome triumph for the team and its fans.

25   Congrats.

26   Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

      The Daily News

1   Questions.

2   Is Dianne Feinstein still news?

3   Is today “Dress Disney” day at school?

4    Is today Friday?

5    Did I really get away with two days of puns and no fruits or vegetables thrown?

6    If people wanted not to get me messy, could they have thrown a package of Bear Creek Soup?

7    Abraham Lincoln. FDR. Dwight D. Eisenhower. JFK. Would any of these presidents have ignored the OWS peeps?

8    Scarier. What would Reagan, Bush, or Bush have done?

9    Was I just elected a union assembly rep?

10   Did Dmitri Landeza Garcia really arrive on 11/21/11 at 3 a.m. coming in at 7lbs, 1 oz. and 19.5″?

11   Is today Friday?

12   Is today really December 2?

13   Did I really become a thousandaire on Wednesday?

14   Is a radio version of It’s a Wonderful Life really being staged at the Theatre on the Square through December 18? Tabard? Ten bucks?

15   Did they really have wind warnings canceled and then forget to tell the wind?

16   Is today Friday?

17   Was Raiders’ linebacker Rolando McClain really arrested for putting a gun up to a guy’s head and firing it next to his ear?

18   Was he REALLY hugely smiling at the camera when he was arrested?

19   Are the 49ers really on the verge of clinching?

20   Is there really a basketball season?

21   Did the Sharks’ offense really show up last night?

22   Is today Friday?

23   Is my son-in-law Josh really a potential vice-presidential candidate?

24   Is Obama still our President?

25   Is Christmas-in-the-Park really back?

26   Did a guy on the radio just tell me that he had an offer I couldn’t refuse?

27   Did Jim Hensen really deny that the characters Bert and Ernie were not stolen from It’s a Wonderful Life?

28   Am I still the world’s best quack journalist?

29   Did I once write an entire analysis of Antigone and call it “Antigoni”, like she was a noodle?

30   Did I really have a weak lesson plan last week and tell my student’s it was “Bud Lite”?

31   Did they really buy it and laugh?

32   Is today Friday?

33   Celebrate.

34   Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington