An excerpt from Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. It's an acerbic, very British book about people being snarky about proper punctuation... and it's about as witty and funny as a grammar book could ever be (and of course was written by a British lady).

This is the passage that completely sold me on the book:

Churchill said hyphens were "a blemish, to be avoided wherever possible". Yet there will always be a problem about getting rid of the hyphen: if it's not extra-marital sex (with a hyphen), it is perhaps extra marital sex, which is quite a different bunch of coconuts. ... The two hundred odd members of the Conservative Party would be lost without it.

There you go. Indulging in my grammar nerdiness. I also helped proof a bunch of my colleagues' descriptions of their term projects. Just wait a few years and I'll be a mad crusader online, or running around my school after class demanding to see that my students' text messages are grammatically correct...

Labels: books, grammar, joke, obsession, school

I would like to know how streets get their names. Obviously, in Phoenix half of the streets (the North-South ones) are named by numbers, and in downtown they're by presidents, but what about Via Linda? Who is Linda?

I bet this is how city planners get dates.

Currently listening:
Friend of the Night
By Mogwai

Labels: random

I once was a DJ and enjoy making mixes, but don't have time for it lately. So I find other people's mixes...

When I have my computer online, I will stream some of them. I am not making any money off of this, and the mixes are usually intended to bring relatively unknown music to light.

If any artist feels that their copyrights are being infringed, fine, I'll take your song off. It's your loss, not being exposed to new ears.

So far I have three mixes and will post them in the next few days. More will follow, when I feel like doing them, and no sooner.

Obviously, these mixes are different from the music above, which I wrote myself. That music I have all the copyrights for, thxvrymch.

Cheers
Steve

Currently listening :
Everything All the Time
By Band of Horses

Labels: DJ, mixing

So I've been found by my students at BASIS school in Tucson on MySpace. This is a good thing - I like my kids.

Therefore, all of you - send me a message or friend request and I'll see you on here.

I promise not to peddle my music on you .. much.

Labels: BASIS, MySpace, school

I've been a bit stressed about something lately, and I brought it up: what's the other Art teacher position that they've been thinking about (i.e., who's that skank who said, "oh, I might be working as the Art teacher next year" - no, that's not what I said but what I thought)? And this person said that with myself and another teacher in the lunch room and the other teacher said that I looked like someone just walked over my grave.

You can't blame me for gettin' my hair up about it: this is my first stable job with any benefits, I like my job, and I make three times my previous high rate of income.

Turns out that they'll just have two teachers - and since she has 17 years' experience in this field and at this grade level, she'll be top of the program, which is fine with me as long as I'm employed full-time doing what I like to do: teach.

Also seems that there may be a Digital Art class next year that I would be teaching, if they can get the hardware (read: computers) for it.

Finally, I'm designing a house - actually it's not that simple, let me back up.

I assigned every one of my students (~200) the same thing: construct a cool house on an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper, so that it will hang sideways along with everyone elses' houses, and the more creative the better. I've had a pretty dizzying variety - shacks, caves, UFO's, mushrooms, etc., etc..

But my 8th graders have been so wonderful lately that they need little to no instruction - leaving me a bit bored, or cleaning, or grading. So I'm using that time to make a house of my own, in my own assignment. Of course, I built a sort of 'dream home' for Rachel and myself (we have conversations about this kinda thing from time to time).

Of course there's a risk in this: I need to prove to my kids that I'm really good - that I'm worth listening to as a teacher. So hopefully this doesn't blow up in my face. I doubt it, though. I'm enjoying myself genuinely and my artwork has universally been great when I do and put time into it.

EDIT: It's kinda sad looking back on this.

Currently reading : The Sandman Vol. 7: Brief Lives By Neil Gaiman

Labels: apartments, BASIS, house, school, teaching, work

But the circumstances surrounding this rebirth warrant bloggage.

I had a program called Stellar Phoenix recovery software. Very nice stuff, didn't have the full version. Sean had tried to recover a hard drive of his by bringing it to Best Buy and giving them a bundle of cash. They got about half of it. He and I decided to go in and buy the program ($130). Worked great - we fixed my drives, and he got his working again to an extent Best Buy didn't touch.

Okay, fine, but why the blog entry? Because I hate messing with computers at this point. I can - I know how to - I've just been the go-to guy among my friends for years on this kind of stuff and it's a 'plumber's pipes are leaky' situation - when I'm done fixing others' computers, I don't wanna do mine.

In this case, I handed it to Sean - - and he learned what he needed to do and did it. I feel vaguely parental pride, and some serious relief I didn't have to do it. I have therefore bequeathed the majority of my computer junk to him - a half dozen hard drives, another half dozen CD drives, cases, etc., etc., that I didn't want to toss ('cos they really were useful for testing) but Rachel wanted gone and I didn't really like having ... especially cluttering up one of our rooms.

And yet all of this doesn't really justify a blog entry. What I'm most happy about is that Sean is finally getting into this stuff - taking the networking classes that pretty much gaurantee a $40k per year job, and generally getting his life together. And it's good seeing that happen to a friend.

A random thing - it's a good thing that I don't live near AZ and Tasha anymore, or I'd always be playing the Sims 2... as it is it can only be a one-hour fix every week or so, which is on the whole a good thing.

Currently playing : The Sims 2

Labels: computers, friends, games, money, Sean