From the publisher’s blurb:
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action.
I know you’ve been putting off reading Jane Austen for many years now. But you really don’t have any more excuses, do you?
Some people are built for blogging on a regular basis. I am obviously not one of those people.
It’s not that I’m shy about sharing my random, interminable musings with the world. Rather, I think I have TOO MANY opportunities to do so, and so blogging seems somewhat redundant.
First, I carpool from Portland to Salem and back again. It’s not a long drive; in fact, it often takes less time than it used to take me to get across town when I lived in Los Angeles. However, those hours add up, and I spend plenty of time airing my views on anything at all to people who are as sick of the scenery as I am.
Next, I teach. Five classes this term, two online and two face-to-face. Which means I get to spout off in front of students for a substantial portion of the day. And they, being students, have to listen to me, even if I get tired and start talking about 1) the time when my cousin tried to lasso my grandpa’s dog, and 2) how the literary tradition of the bildungsroman might relate to the films of the Coen brothers. (Just to take an example from today’s class…)
Finally, in my spare time not teaching or commuting, I make artsy-type things. There’s not much of an audience for the sorts of things I produce as an artist, but even so, it still counts as an avenue of expression.
I’m not even mentioning my poor wife and cats, who constantly have to listen to me (or at least have to be in an adjacent room while I’m muttering).
Looking over this list, it appears obvious to me that I am communicating WAY too much. Which makes me feel me feel much less guilty about the irregularity of these blog posts. Phew.
I’m in the homestretch of grading the first big batch of essays from my WR121 courses. I’ll have more to say about this shortly, but in the meantime, please enjoy:
Leonard Nimoy singing “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”
There are many benefits to carpooling; one of them is that the conversation can remind you of forgotten gems from yesteryear such as that song.
I am a glutton for punishment. A few months ago, my good friend and colleague Jeff McAlpine (who teaches at Clackamas Community College) asked if I wanted to help him introduce a couple of performances of Waiting For Godot at Clackamas Repertory Theatre.
I said, “Why not? It’s not like I’ll be busy prepping my themed WR121s or FA255 courses.”
Cue the rueful laughter on the soundtrack.
Anyway. We’re scheduled to introduce the Saturday performances on September 27 and October 4. Our introductions are scheduled for 6:45, and curtain for the play itself is 7:30.
The title of our introduction is “Top Ten Things You Don’t Need to Know About Samuel Beckett.” And yes, I will be playing a keyboard and pretending to be Paul Shaffer. I need to brush up on my Canadian, but otherwise I think I’m going to nail this role.
I’m in the middle of putting together all the materials I’ll be using for this term’s courses, and while blogging about the process would be an excellent way to procrastinate, I can’t imagine that anyone would want to read about it. Actually, let’s test that hypothesis: I’m polishing up the third essay assignment for my WR121 courses, and I just spent five minutes researching the early years of American television broadcasting.
OK, maybe that was a little bit interesting. Nonetheless, I’d rather write about comics.
First, let me introduce you to my current favorite comic strip. No, it’s not Garfield Minus Garfield, although that was a good guess.
It’s Achewood. Achewood is about a couple of bears, a tiger, and an otter. It’s occasionally vulgar and almost always funny. I know, I know, vulgar bears and tigers aren’t for everyone (the otter is never vulgar). It might not be your cup of tea. If it’s not, forget I mentioned it.
However, if you like your cup of tea sweetened with an occasional fart or sex joke, you might want to check it out. Thanks to the magic of free online comics from Portland-based Dark Horse Comics, we get several full-color pages about the greatest trip to Taco Bell of all time.
In other news, there’s a new Ambush Bug series out from DC Comics.
I was never a big comic book reader as a kid. I liked the comic strips (Bloom County, Calvin & Hobbes–you know, the classics), but I didn’t really have the disposable income or proximity to a comic book store to really get into the monthly books. There was only one series that really grabbed my interest, and that was Ambush Bug. I was ten years old, and that comic book blew my mind. It was about a humanoid bug who… had problems with his socks and kept getting beat up. None of it made sense. When I got older, I learned that the reason it didn’t make sense was because I didn’t read many comic books, and the entire premise of the Ambush Bug series was to present a bunch of inside jokes that only hardcore devotees of the DC Universe would truly appreciate.
I didn’t “get” any of the jokes, but I laughed anyway, because it was the most absurd thing I’d ever stumbled across. (This was still a couple years before I discovered Monty Python, but around the same time I saw the Beatles in Hard Day’s Night.)
Now, a couple of decades later, Ambush Bug is back. I’m still not a regular reader of any DC Comic, which means I’m probably still not “getting” the jokes. But this afternoon, when I’ve finished reading up on Milton Berle and Hopalong Cassiday, I’m heading down to my friendly neighborhood comic book store to pick up issue two of the new series. Sometimes things are just funnier when they don’t make any sense.
SPECIAL BONUS WINTER TERM FILM ARTS COURSE PLUG: Remember, kids! The Coen brothers’ Burn After Reading opens at a theater near you tomorrow!
Just in case any of you were under the mistaken impression that I’m cooler than I actually am, here’s a little story that last blog post reminded me of:
As an undergraduate, my friends (and believe me, I use the plural of this word very, very loosely. I had one friend, and he had another friend that hated my guts. I wasn’t too fond of him, either, but I still counted him as a friend because it’s humiliating to say, when what your weekend plans are, “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just hang with my friend.”) and I decided to form a gang. To be precise, a Grammar Gang.
We weren’t organized enough to come up with a mission statement, and we never held any meetings. The one thing we did do was decide to get tattoos.
My friend decided he would get a schwa:
His reasoning: “It’s upside down. That’s AWESOME!”
My friend’s friend… well, I forgot what he decided to get. But he was a total jackass, so it doesn’t really matter.
I had a difficult time deciding between the semicolon:
;
Or the classic expression of surprise and amusement, the exclamation point within parentheses:
(!)
I went back and forth for what seemed like weeks, until we each privately decided that getting a tattoo would be far too painful, and that being in a gang really wasn’t working out.
In the years since, I finally did make up my mind. I’d get both tattoos. As soon as I get over my fear of pain.
But then I hopped over to Laura’s Faculty Blog to see what she had to say, and noticed that her blog has the pretty theme with the fall leaves and that my blog has the Rise of The Apocalyptic Turquoise Machines theme. [NOTE: Not the actual name of the theme.]
Then I checked out Peter’s Civic Engagement blog, which has a streamlined Red, White, and Blue theme going on (and, appropriately enough for a non-partisan political blog, a header in which the red and blue merge into purple).
What were the criteria for assigning themes to these faculty blogs? I’m thinking that perhaps it was related in some way to our personalities… which means that someone out there, when he or she thinks of me, thinks of mechanical turquoise monsters working ceaselessly to blot out the sun and destroy life as we know it.
Which is precisely the image I want to project. Kudos, webmasters!
What was I thinking when I agreed to take on this brand new blog during Finals? How am I supposed to come up with something interesting to say when I’m spending every minute of every day thinking about the Celtics/Lakers series?
I’m sure I’ll have something of substance to post soon. Oh, but I guess I should be doing some grading, too…