Month: August 2013

  • Say cheese.

    The Office.

    Classic.

    The Daily News

     

    1    I think I’ll start this DN with a monologue from You’re a Good Man,Charlie Brown in Comic Sans 36 pt:

    <Music Under>

    YOU’RE A GOOD MAN CHARLIE BROWN 

     Charlie Brown:  I think lunchtime is about the worst time of the day for me.  Always having to sit here alone.  Of course, sometimes mornings aren’t so pleasant, either – waking up and wondering if anyone would really miss me if I never got out of bed.  Then there’s the night, too – lying there and thinking about all the stupid things I’ve done during the day.  And all those hours in between – when I do all those stupid things.  Well, lunchtime is among the worst times of the day for me.

         Well, I guess I’d better see what I’ve got.  [He opens the bag, unwraps a sandwich, and looks inside]  Peanut butter.  [He bites and chews]  Some psychiatrists say that people who eat peanut butter sandwiches are lonely.  I guess they’re right.  And if you’re really lonely, the peanut butter sticks to the roof of your mouth.  [He munches quietly, idly fingering the bench]  Boy, the PTA sure did a good job of painting these benches.  [He looks off to one side]  There’s that cute little redheaded girl eating her lunch over there.  I wonder what she’d do if I went over and asked her if I could sit and have lunch with her.  She’d probably laugh right in my face.  It’s hard on a face when it gets laughed in.  There’s an empty place next to her on the bench.  There’s no reason why I couldn’t just go over and sit there.  I could do that right now.  All I have to do is stand up.  [He stands]  I’m standing up.  [He sits]  I’m sitting down.  I’m a coward.  I’m so much of a coward she wouldn’t even think of looking at me.  She hardly ever does look at me.  In fact, I can’t remember her ever looking at me.  Is there any reason in the world why she shouldn’t look at me?  Is she so great and am I so small that she couldn’t spare one little moment just to…[He freezes]  She’s looking at me. [In terror he looks one way, then another]  She’s looking at me.

    [His head looks all around, frantically trying to find something else to notice.  His teeth clench.  Tension builds.  Then, with one motion, he pops the paper bag over his head]

    1   It’s Frideeeeeeeeee!!! Great week!

    2   Got a LOT done and looking WAY forward to the rest of the school year.

    3    I don’t know about others, but I thought our opening went pretty smoothly.

    4    Yesterday I went with my colleague Sean to get pho during our prep period, which is the last period of the day.

    5    I haven’t had a last-period-of-the day prep period since 2005.

    6    At YB I tended to love that period of time, because I could have an hour breather before going into rehearsals for shows. I also loved it when there WEREN’T shows because I could get away and cruise, or enjoy a little free time, or simply hang in the Theatre with my guitar, amp and mic. Haven’t had that sort of freedom in quite some time. Miss it! 

    7   It was fun having a common prep with a colleague. Sean is younger than I, and we are working together to develop some creative lessons that could incorporate the common core curriculum (now known as “standards,” as though Sinatra used to croon them.) that is currently all the rage.

    8   We took off at a little after 2 p.m. which seemed ungodly early to be leaving work for the day. 

    9   We left work to go to work, only in a much more pleasant surrounding. It was also out of the line of fire. Nobody could reach us. Quite worthy of hot pho and high fives. 

    10  Sean joined us last year. In fact, on the first day of school last year I walked in early and our Principal introduced me and asked if I could show him around. 

    11  He is a younger teacher, but clearly has all the love and passion it takes to be really good. He isn’t afraid of anything, and is willing not only to take my lead on some pointers, but to give me input on modern trends. 

    12   We ran across each other last year, and always had laughs. It’s a great combo; we had piping hot pho and exchanged “pedagogical methodology.” #snootyconfusinglyconvolutedtermsforteachingmethods #trendthatmakesnonclaritythefashion #wrongwaytoteachclearwriting #andotherfancystuff

    13   Here. This is from Dictionary.com. It is literally a cut and paste:

    ped·a·go·gy

    [ped-uh-goh-jee, -goj-ee]

    noun, plural ped·a·go·gies.
    1.
    the function or work of a teacher; teaching.
     
    14   Okay. Why didn’t you just SAY that?
     
    15   Pedagogical. Methodology. Systemic. They’re quite the rage. 
     
    16   Here’s a wonderful quote by the great Stephen King from his awesome book entitled On Writing: 

    “This is a short book on writing because most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad. I figured the shorter the book, the less the bullshit.

      “One notable exception to the bullshit rule is The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. There is little or no detectable bullshit in that book. (Of course it’s short; at eighty-five pages it’s much shorter than this one.) I’ll tell you now that every aspiring writer should read The Elements of Style. Rule 17 in the chapter titled “Principles of Composition” is “Omit needless words.” I will try to do that here.”

                                                                       —On Writing, Second Forward

    17  The entire trend in writing in 2013 is across-the-board training in “technical” writing. This makes sense in a world that is swiftly changing on a daily basis, and whose technological jargon is a must in order to keep companies current. Cisco just fired 3,000 workers worldwide because they couldn’t keep up with the competition. 

    18   So I get it. 

    19   Unfortunately, technical writers tend to think they sound smarter if they use words like “pedagogical” rather than the simpler and more easily understood “teaching.” They don’t. They sound ridiculously stupid when they do that. Words like “pedagogical” should be run out of town with a cattle prod.

    20   That’s just one word. Multiply that times the millions of words times the millions of teachers buying into this trend. Rudolph Flesch would turn  in his grave.

    21   While the trend toward teaching technical writing seems exciting to an emerging technological language movement, it throws away all logical laws of clarity. The baby is being thrown out with the bath water. As a person who has taught clarity of thought in writing, I find myself staring down a dark abyss. I had a dream last night that my last copy of The ABC of Style fell out of my hands and vanished into that abyss. 

    22    If Flesch were around nowadays, you could be sure that he would “call out” this technology trend and declare it gobbledygook, which it is. How this trend has managed to supersede years of conciseness and clarity lessons is beyond me. For the layperson, here is the Merriam-Webster definition of gobbledygook. Please note the downward trend of its popularity:

    gobbledygook

     

    Popularity

    Gobbledygook is currently in the bottom 50% of lookups on Merriam-Webster.com.

    gob·ble·dy·gook

    noun ˈgä-bəl-dē-ˌgu̇k, -ˌgük

    Definition of GOBBLEDYGOOK

    : wordy and generally unintelligible jargon
     

    Variants of GOBBLEDYGOOK

    gob·ble·dy·gook also gob·ble·de·gook

    Examples of GOBBLEDYGOOK

    1. The report is just a bunch of gobbledygook.
    2. < Cut the gobbledygook and just tell me what the final cost of the car would be>

    Origin of GOBBLEDYGOOK

    irregular from gobble, noun
    First Known Use: 1944

    Related to GOBBLEDYGOOK

    23   It is SO refreshing to see this. I don’t see any control over the wildfire that is technical writing. I simply see uncontrolled and convoluted language instruction running rampant. It is difficult enough for teachers of English to teach clarity and conciseness, and now teachers of English are being told that we have to teach English the wrong way, AND with reckless abandon.

    24   Anybody lookin’?

    25   Following is a short list of words Rudolph Flesch would do away with. With which Rudolph Flesch would do away. With which Rudolph Flesch would hurl into an abyss: bespeak, natatorium, per annum, herewith, daresay, hiatus, devoid of, sans, pending, concomitant, burgeon, callow youth, and a host of others, including the word host. The ABC of Style is a fun book to have around. Grab one for a penny on Amazon. Can’t beat it.

    25   Moving on, Part One: <Boy, the PTA sure did a good job of painting these benches.>

    26   Friday.

    27   I had a GREAT week but I do welcome in Friday.

    28   Dare I call it a week already?

    29   I do dare.

    30   It’s late.

    31   I kept writing this last night at 10:30, and then awakened early screaming.

    32   No, it wasn’t the loss of the Flesch book down the abyss.

    33    It was the Aczone commercial where wimminz with acne had 10X mirrors as heads.

    34    AND the Soda Stream commercial where you could make Crystal Light and Kool-Aid fizzy.

    35    Why do they put those odd things on right before you go to sleep?

    37    The fizzy one wasn’t so bad, although in the realm of Kool-Aid I saw a guy making a full cup of sugar yellow and fizzy.

    38   The Aczone wimminz with10X mirrors as heads gave me the genuine heebz.

    39    I wanted to run out and jump into that abyss to run away from thems wimminz.

    40    At least it would all be a dream, and at the bottom of the abyss, I would have some good reading.

    41    AnywayZ…

    42    Quick end-of-the week Tuggle: Tuggle # 3: It’s simply “anyway” folks. No “s.” 

    43    My guilt at not teaching you things is officially assuaged.

    44    It’s Friday.

    46    I’ll cut this short.

    47    Have an awesome weekend. Fly low.

    48    Peace

     

    ~H~

     

    www.xanga.com/bharrington

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Say cheese.

    The Daily News

    1   WHEW!

    2   Thursday already, and we are rockin’ it!

    3   I LOVE teaching!

    4   I don’t ALWAYS love teaching, but right now, I LOVE it.

    5   There’s always something about the beginning of a new school year that is eternally refreshing.

    6   Yes, we have to sit through all the rules, regulations, trends and things but once the dust settles, we get into the classroom, roll up our sleeves, and get down to it. 

    7   Moving on, Part One: Speaking of school, I’d like to talk to the guy who pitched Staples’ Back-to-School commercial that begins with a horrid version of Alice Cooper’s monster hit School’s Out. I didn’t really catch the entire commercial, because most of teevee these days is like a lava lamp with droning sounds that fall to the floor like obnoxious raindrops.

    8   Last night I busied myself with writing this when that commercial came on. The Staples’ version of the classic end-of-the-school year song sounded as though it was being sung by the Angel’s Camp Girls’ Choir. This with a song about the end of the school year done originally by a band whose lead singer purportedly tore a live chicken to pieces on stage, bit off its head, and quaffed its blood during a September 1969 concert at a festival in Toronto. The press jumped all over the story the following day, prompting Cooper to deny all accusations. The immortal Frank Zappa heard this and swiftly got this message to Cooper: “Well, whatever you do, don’t tell anyone you didn’t do it!”

    The inimitable Frank Zappa

    9   Staples. My head spun. Aren’t they supposed to target students during their Back-to-School campaign? Isn’t Back-to-School one of their biggest seasons of the year?

    10  The place has to be teeming with executives who majored in Back-to-School. They had to use some good bait to get the Back-to-Schoolers to come in and spend money on their products. Somebody somewhere came in with the idea of using School’s Out, not by Cooper, but by a rather dull cherubic choir in order to ignite huge spending sprees. 

    11  I REALLY had to ponder: “Who PITCHED that?”

    12   I glanced over the top of my granny glasses and hitched a smile.

    13    I then gave my head a non-physical shake and got back to work on this. I again looked up and pondered. Sidebar: English majors actually major in pondering. They look up and ponder more than the average citizen.

    14   I remembered as a seven or eight-year old I would watch on teevee obnoxiously stupid commercials, most of which would make me go berserk. At one time I couldn’t stand it any longer. I looked up at my Dad, who was reading his morning Chronicle when I abruptly blurted out, “I could write stuff better than that!” I had reached the boiling point. 

    15   His response? “If you think you could do it, then do it.” And he turned the page and got right back to reading.

    16   That incident shut me up for about a hundred years.

    17   I never did get around to pursuing advertising as a career. I remember toying with the idea in college, but thought about how truly scary it must be to pitch an idea to executives and investors.

    18   I spun it around and decided it probably isn’t as easy as it looks.

    19   What is?

    20   #sigh

    21   Those who can.

    22   Moving on, Part Two: Yesterday morning’s Merc News had this as a headline: THRIVING GIANTS. For about a billionth of a second I thought I had somehow wandered into a parallel universe. Fireworks and explosions burst all through my frabjous mind.

    23   But only for about a billionth of a second. The Giants. Our Giants. My Giants #allapologiesrusshodges

    24   It’s all darned impossible for mortal man to comprehend.

    25   Hold on to that feelin’.

    26   Yeesh.

    27   I can’t wait to channel surf back and forth between the Giants and Property Virgins tonight. I just shake my head when I think of the legacy of this team. History won’t be kind. This team will be remembered as the all-time choke team that gave up when things got tough. Not true maybe, but that’s the legacy they have carved for themselves. I still love them because they’re my team. But it is a mild sort of sad. Just mild.There are worse things.There are worse things.But I shall say no more. 

    28   Moving on, Part Three: Later that night: Oh, what it has all come to! Woe is me! Woe are we! Woe, woe, woe!

    29   I’m pretty sure that was from Oedipus Rex.That guy did a lot of woeing.

    30   He was sort of a woeing machine.

    31   Anybody lookin’?

    32   I’ll never do that again.

    33   No. Seriously this time.  I PROMISE. 

    34   Is there a back door outta here?

    35   Moving on, Part Four: My historical battle with inanimate objects continued into the day before yesterday.

    36   It was darned well Chaplinesque.

    37   I washed a few dishes by hand the other night, a secret obsession I have with being clean. I wanted to wash them and THEN put them into the dishwasher.

    38   I was scrubbing a coffee cup when the handle broke off, right in my hand.

    39   Probably brittle from so much washing.

    40   I’ve also been trying to stay all over the laundry, since we actively work out, garden, and LIVE, which includes lots and lots of organic grime.

    41   I’ve gotten Zen about the grime.

    42   I learned it from Lennon.

    43   I put my head inside a bag and do a grimal scream.

    44  

    45   Oh stop. Somehow I had to get a camel in here for longtime DN fan Cindy Barrett. 

    46   For the rest of you, I’ll never do that again. I already promised once. And you know me. 

    47   Moving on, Part Five: Where was I? Oh yeah #inanimateobjects #thinkoldman #Chaplinesque #laundry

    48   While trying to keep up with the laundry, I went to take it out of the dryer that same night only to find I had more shirts than I had hangers.

    49   I put aside two Hawaiian shirts that had small rips, and took great care to go green with the hangers.

    50   I can go green when called upon. I’m cool like that.

    51   I put one of my crisp, clean school shirts on a hanger. The weight of the shirt broke the hanger hook off the hanger, right in my hand, EXACTLY like the coffee cup handle earlier in the evening. The shirt’s neck area  mysteriously showed evidence of ring-around-the collar.

    52   I thought of hiring a detective.

    53   I saw this as a copycat inanimate-object occurrence.

    54   In laundry terms that’s a high grime.

    55    

    56   OKAY, okay.

    57   I’ll never do that again.

    58    The same night I was editing the DN when something knocked the teevee tray holding my laptop completely to the floor.Total collapse. The tray flattened at on odd angle. My laptop landed safely on my lap.

    59   The teevee tray landed flatly on the floor. I wanted to put chalk lines around it, and again call a detective.

    60   Moving on, Part the Last: NOOOOOOOOOO!

    61   Sorry. Just having a sudden flashback. I found myself in some odd bubble that was yesterday morning, with some Lifetime movie flickering on tthe teevee. I looked up. What I saw was all these wretched people huddled together singing Amazing Grace.They seemed to be dodging meteor showers. It very much could have been the Angel’s Camp Girls’ Choir doing the singing. Meteor showers. Yeesh.

    62   Like I don’t have enough to worry about.

    63   About which to worry.

    64   That’s about plenty for today. I’m in the present and headed for cover. Can umbrellas stop meteors?

    65   I’ll see you tomorrow.

    66   Peace and puns.

    ~H~

     

    www.xanga.com/bharrington

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  •  

    BYAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! 

     

     

    The Daily News: Special Pre-School Year Edition!!!

    1   Anybody lookin’?

    2   I am excited to bring you this very special edition of the DN, because it is my proud pleasure to announce the engagement of my daughter Nicole to her longtime friend and confidant Matt Seymour! This summer Matt proposed to Nicoley in a surprise sunrise proposal on Kiva Beach in glorious Lake Tahoe.

    3   Everyone was in on it except Nicole, who was somewhat annoyed that we were dragging her out of bed first thing in the morning to watch the sunrise. Normally she is an early riser, and the first to go to a sunrise. This morning just wasn’t hers; she was tired, and a tad cranky about being shaken awake.

    4   This made all of it better, as we knew something that she didn’t: it was a morning designed to change her life forever!

    5   Getting these pictures up here was a bit of a trick, what with a new laptop, Windows 8, and a broken-down Xanga.

    6   It all somehow worked, even though it was all shot from an older iPhone 4. The pictures are undoctored, for the record. I love that this all got caught somehow in spite of the obstacles. The entire morning was nothing short of magical.

    7   We arrived at the parking lot in the woods in virtual darkness, with dark orange and indigo hints of morning hovering above the eastern horizon.

    8   Nicole wore a Disneyland hoody, red sweatpants and Tevas, an elegant and quite understated wardrobe for a life-altering event.

    9   We walked up and down the beach, a slight morning breeze keeping it all real.

    10  Matt traveled light. He had a wedding ring, black hoody, and a six-thousand-pound backpack on his person.

    11  If Nicole HAD suspected anything, that backpack cleared all suspicions.

    12  Waiting for a sunrise usually involves walking around, taking artistic pictures of sand, and twitching one’s head every minute or so.

    13  Tahoe is a particularly fun arena for sunrise pictures,  as a mountaintop could be graced in bright gold while the horizon might still be dark as a morning mist.

    14   So Matt walked around with his backpack companion. The sun kept teasing, getting slightly brighter in the east, but still almost agonizingly slow.

    15   Helene walked down the beach, turned around, and came back.

    16   As the sun pushed further and further up, instincts took over.

    17   Almost on cue, Caitlin suddenly dashed in front of Nicole with her phone out, coaxing Nicole to take some sunrise silhouette pictures of her, forcing Nicole’s back to Matt.

    18   My eyes, meanwhile, darted to and fro, wondering if anything big was happening.

    19   Within seconds, I saw Matt poised with the ring, and saw him give a visual cue by kneeling down. Nicole turned around and was instantly stunned.

    20   I made a mad scramble for my glasses, gave up and started snapping pictures.

    21   What we wound up with was a series of shots that caught the moment perfectly, along with a video that is somewhere, but that refused to upload on Facebook.

    22   After “The Moment” we all gathered together in a sort of group hug. I saw the shadow and took a picture of it. It seems almost better than had I attempted to snap our faces.

    24   What a fine morning. The birds, who seemed to have joined in on the conspiracy earlier, chirped happily as we all stood amazed.

    25   Back at the Lodge, my sisters Linda and Gayle had set up a mimosa bar. Caitlin had made a paper medallion that said, “I Do,” along with and a banner that said “Congrats” in tiffany-blue and coral, THE colors Nicole and Matt will use as theme colors for their wedding.

    26   When we got there, the party took off instantly. Gayle played Sinatra songs beginning with “The Way You Look Tonight.” Good thing it wasn’t “The Way You Look This Morning,” because we all looked like hell.

    27   After lots of clinking glasses, the party moved to my cabin, where I made a breakfast that would have won me a championship on Chopped. Eggs, Potatoes, bacon, icy orange juice and hot coffee were the orders of the day, featuring the most amazing potatoes I’ve ever whipped up #tonsofbutter

    28   Afterwards we all took it easy. Celebrity golf dominated the clubs, although the younger set managed to hit the town later in the evening, but most of the day remained mellow and relaxed, an absolutely perfect day during a true midsummer, complete with love, magic, and even a forest.

    29   The wedding will be held July 12, 2014, a week before we again hit what has charmingly been referred to as “Mars.”

    30   We call it Mars because we can’t be reached while up there.

    31   So I thought I would kick off the school year a day early by sending out these joyous tidings!

    32   We’ll see you all tomorrow, with a brand new string of DN’s coming at you each school day.

    33   Fun sharing all of this, and a huge congratulations to Matt and Nicoley, and to their baby Rocket J. Dog, aka Rocky!

    34   Hope you enjoyed this. See ya soon!

    35   Peace.

    ~H~ 

     

    www.xanga.com/bharrington

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  •         

     DAY 2: ANYBODY LOOKIN’?

    The Daily News

    1    ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫Well the first days are the hardest days, don’t you worry anymore♪ ♫ ♪ ♫  = ) 

    2   Okay so whoever decided to start school on a Tuesday needs his or her head examined. Like that? “His or her.” Captain Correctness.

    3   Today is Wednesday already.

    4   I have to come in with some sort of magical lesson, even though I just floated in from summer.

    5   What lesson?

    6   How about Tuggle 2, which is a spelling rule. It goes like this: given a word with two syllables (table, empty, revert, etc.) and the accent is on the second syllable (e.g. in the list I just gave, “revert” is the only one where the accent is on the second syllable. You say “re-VERT”  but you don’t say “ta-BULL” or “em-TEE.” Simple, right?

    7   So let’s start again: given a word with two syllables and the accent is on the second syllable, AND the word ends in a consonant/vowel/consonant…(examples: occur, commit, admit, etc. you double the final consonant before adding a suffix, or more to the word. “occurrence, committable, admittance. Just memorize this rule. Look it over for a few minutes until it sinks in, and it will be with you forever!!!

    8  

    9   Okay I have officially assuaged my guilt at not being as actively “on it” as I will be within days.

    10  I promise that I’ll evermore be on it like a sonnet.  

      

    11  Oh, come on!

    12

    13  English rocks.

    14  I’ll never do that again.

    15   I swear.

    16   Moving on, Part 1: fajfkds;fkdsjfkl;sdjfdsjfkdsjfdsfjs

    17   That’s a sort of doodlefast version of my first day teaching, 2013.

    18   I had lots of visitors early, and LOTS of fun!

    19   Short day. It was remarkably, well, short.

    20   I had just finished my second class of the day and shouted at my class, “Your next class is…lunch!”

    21   Lunch after third period. That is the YB equivalent of lunch after second period.

    22   I skipped lunch, hopped across the hall to visit my friend Gwen, and we laughed and waited out the seemingly endless lunch period.

    23   Sooooooo weird.

    24   If you are a person with a normal job, you don’t have lunch at your morning coffee break, right? It was like that.

    25   I got back, finished the next three periods, and my day was done.

    26   Ba-BAM!

    27   I then checked my emails.

    28   I must have had 726 emails, and yes I’m exaggerating.

    29   Most wanted some sort of immediate action, which I had little time to do. I was spending my prep period planning some things with another teacher. By the time I was done with all that, and with stopping at the store to get printers’ ink for my school printer, I was on my way home. I was starved; the dog was starved, and I was fogged. Surrealistically speaking.

    30   Don’t get old. You get foggy.

    31   Let me qualify: Don’t get THAT old.

    32   Moving on, Part 2: fjfdsklfjdfjsdlkfjsdfjsdfsdkl

    33   What was I just talking about?

    34   About what was I just talking?

    35   Oh yeah.

    36   It’s official.

    37   Property Virgins is more entertaining than the 2012 World Champion San Francisco Giants.

    38

     >

    39  Honest.

    40  Don’t get old.

    40  Last night I watched the Giants’ game right up to the drizzle.

    41  Took me exactly a millisecond to begin channel surfing.

    42  After a ridiculously quick skim, I settled on Property Virgins.

    43   It’s about people who have no idea about buying houses buying houses.

     

      

     

    44   One episode kept my interest for around five minutes because they had the best possible affordable house practically in their mitts, and kept grumping about trivial things.

    45   I root for young people trying to get into houses, don’t get me wrong. I totally get it. But when these morons let a great deal slip through their hands, I almost think, “Good!”

    46   That’s my social media ogre coming out.

    47   Shouldn’t I cheer for anyone, especially young people, who are simply trying to build on some dreams?

    48   The goodly person in me says, “Yes, I DO cheer for everybody to be happy and to get nice things and to live dreams.”

    49   But we are so geared to good guys v. bad buys that we assume that snooty people are always bad guys.

    50   Maybe they’re just snoots.

     

    51   Moving on, Part the Thoid: Anybody lookin’?

    52   Same day.

    53   Ever do that?

    51   You wake up screaming at like four a.m. You go back to sleep at six. It’s an excuse to close your eyes. You get up. You take a shower. You mumble to no one in particular, “Same day.”

    52   You get through the morning, go into the break room, get coffee and a banana, and you drop the banana on the floor, causing your coffee to spill all over your shirt. You go into the rest room and soak your shirt with water and try to clean it with toilet tissue. Little balls of wet toilet tissue cling to your shirt. You again grumble to no one in particular, “Same day.”

    53   @DN readers: You get the idea.

    54   Yesterday morning, early, I had to go have my blood tested for one thing or another. I decided to go in early, before school. I got in and out pretty swiftly. I did a few chores, and before I knew it I arrived at school.

    55   Somewhere in there the first day of school flew by. The dog had three dinners. The Giants drizzled. I cooked dinner. I watched Property Virgins. I wrote this. It’s now time for bed.

    56   Same day.

    57   The sprinklers just shot on out front. I am now in the present. At least the present last night.

    58   I keep meaning to change the timer. I keep forgetting.

    59   The teevee just channel-surfed to Godfather II. It is my fave Godfather. It has scenes from Tahoe. Last summer I floated past the Corleone mansion. In real life, it is called Fleur du Loc.  Flower of the Lake. I floated around it in an inflatable raft. Awesome. I said a Hail Mary.

    60   It’s too late for me to watch it right now.  I own it anyway.

    61    Still.

    62    Same day. At least last night it was. Now it is Wednesday. You are now in the present. I hope you enjoyed your ride.

    63    You guys have an awesome day.

    64    Forget all of this the second you’re done reading. It’s all a lot of uppity pish-posh anyway.

    65    Stay safe.

    66    See you again.

    ~H~

    www.xanga.com/bharrington

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

                                              

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  •  The Daily News

     

    Say cheese.

       LADIEEEZ AND GENTLEMEN!!! ANNOUNCING THE DN’S SEVENTEENTH YEAR IN EXISTENCE!!!

    PLEASE JOIN ME IN USHERING THE IMMORTAL DN IN TO THE 2013-14 SCHOOL YEAR!!!!

    1   We’re baaaaaaaaaack!!!

    2   Anybody lookin’?

    3   First day of school. Always scary. Always fun.

    4   The best part of today is my schedule.

    5   I go in at 10:30 and leave at 2:20. In between I pretend I’m doing something important.

    6   I’m excited as always to see my students from last year, who will come in all scrubbed and excited, and I also look forward to seeing my friends and colleagues.

    7   Fast Summer: Summertime hit and got out just as fast as it could. It ended so abruptly that I blindly crashed into a metaphorical brick building, causing a cartoon safe to fall on me. The building was there: it was there, it was THERE, and then SPLAT!!! It was literally in my face. I hit the brick and mortar like a Toon. And THEN I got smashed by a perfectly cartooned black safe.

    8   It’s okay.

    9   It’s all copacetic.

    10  Anyhow, I got here safely, and that’s no understatement.

    11  Now if I could just stretch out of this accordion body, I could get up and enjoy the brilliance and the surrealism of the first day of school.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    12   It just occurred to me that I’m too old for this.

    13   At least I THINK I am.

    14   Every time I say that, some doe-eyed student will say in all her earnest: “You aren’t THAT old!”

    15   Such an innocent thing for a kid to say.

    16   Little will she realize that we Old Brown Shoes interpret that statement to mean this: “You’re old, but you aren’t THAT old!”

    17   Maybe she would see it more clearly if she looks in the mirror, sees some acne, and declares, “OMG! I look HORRIBLE!”

    18   …only to have a reassuring friend respond, “You don’t look THAT horrible!”

    19  

    20   Say cheese.

    21   Moving on, Part One: I almost didn’t get this DN off, believe it or not. Xanga, the service I use to write this stuff, had already been hitting the skids toward the end of the last school year. Xanga has been around forever; many “bloggers” began on this old horse. I actually jumped horses earlier this summer, setting myself up on gmail’s Blogger (even though I despise the DN being referred to as a “blog.” It pre-dates blogging by years!).

    22   I was all ready to kick Xanga to the curb, but realized too soon that they hold all my archives.

    23   Xanga has been financially shaky for a while now, and they wouldn’t allow me access to my own archives unless I upgraded. To their credit, I don’t remember ever having to pay for being able to do this, so I didn’t mind throwing a little cash their way.

    24    In the process, I was able to keep and access my archives. This seemed important to me, since I have nine years of my seventeen on Xanga archives. Xanga still seems to have issues among Mozilla, Chrome and Explorer, all three of which seem to be needed in order for me to have access to all editing tools. This SEEMS pretty stupid, but that’s the way it is.

    25   They also won’t let me do border colors anymore, or any borders at all. It was just a feature I enjoyed, because it would sometimes make things look a little more clean. It’s sort of like when you blacken the lines in a coloring book, or trim your lawn.

    26    On top of all this, I got a new laptop last year. It featured the really kooky Windows 8, which changes the way you do nearly everything. I was a reasonably quick study, but it seemed as though someone had come into my office and rearranged everything. It all still works, but if I try to throw a piece of paper into the waste paper basket it bounces on a bare spot and rolls to a jaunty stop. Things just aren’t where they usually are.

    27   So there I was two days ago still trying to figure out how to make Blogger happen, when I decided to give Xanga one last chance.

    28   For the sake of brevity, as well as of tradition, I finally chose to go with Xanga, even though it is at best a rickety old jalopy.

    29   But I know how to slip and slide through the cracks with Xanga, so I’m pretty sure the choice will work.

    30   Too many changes happening too fast. That’s what old people always say.

    31   I’m old, yo.

    32   But I’m not THAT old.

    33   Moving on, Part Two: Whilst rambling and experimenting with ol’ Blogger, I thought I’d try to sneak a new feature into the DN, a fun little idea I called Today’s Unsolicited Glamorous Grammar Lesson, or “Tuggle” for short. The idea is that on certain random days, I will throw grammar tips out to the laymen out there. Or the laypersons. Or whomever.

    34   Just ride with it.

    35   Here is the last part of the DN I had actually posted on my “Blogger.” It may seem random, but it was designed to BE random. So this is how it went down; this is almost a cut/paste verbatim of that post:

    37   “Ah, shoebox.

    38   I LOVES me right after vacay. The back of my head, which contains all my logic and memory suddenly expands to the size of a shoebox, and the most logical things cling to that new back wall of my mind. Given any stimuli at summer’s end, logic and common sense take the length of a shoebox extra to return to the frontal part of my cranium. It’s what I may someday deem the “Duh…” factor. Nothing happening too fast in the cranium at the end of summer. We won’t name that phenomenon just yet. We may never.

    39   Cranium #ohyeah

    40   Something in the back of  that shoebox makes me remember that we played a game called Cranium whilst on Mars. Originally Jupiter. Mars #synomymsforvacay #crickets #pereidmeteorshowerpassesover #cranium #mars #jupiter #vacay #synomyms #ohyeah. Bottom line: I cannot be reached whilst there.

    41   Whilst. #jupiter…

    42   That one kills me.

    43    There’s no rule about that one, but if I could invent one, then here it is: pretend that there is no word “whilst,” at least not in the USA. I once read a book on choreography by some choreographer who kept using “whilst.” I almost thought all choreographers were morons because of that one choreographer. The word is archaic, and on the brink of obsolescence. So it isn’t technically wrong, but it IS just silly and unnecessary. YOU think you sound intelligent. You don’t. You sound like a moron #trustme

    44   I hope to give a bunch of grammar tips in this year’s DN. I had planned on that one all the way back in June.

    45   That was pre-shoebox, and right on the front lines.

    46   So I guess there’s no time like the present. Here is my rule/non-rule on the word “whilst.”:

    47   There practically ain’t no “whilst” anymore. Lose it. Now. There technically ain’t no “ain’t” either, but that’s for another day.

    48    Today’s Unsolicited Glamorous Grammar lesson is “No whilst.” Let’s lay this word to rest, America. England, it’s all yours. I personally think it’s janky.

    49   Hmmm. I think “Tuggle” might work, especially if I go lower case after the initial letter “T.” I like it because it is loosely structured enough that I am not committed to it every single day.

    50   Tuggle 1: “No whilst.” Not on my watch.

    51   Me likes.

    52   Anybody lookin’?

    53   We’ll see you tomorrow.

    54   Feel free to feed back whilst this “blog” or whatever is still in working order.

    55   It’s Tuesday. Welcome back.

    56   Fly low.

    57   See you again.

    58   Peace.

     

    ~H~

    www.xanga.com/bharrington