Labels: ambition, education, school

Labels: high school, idiots, school, teenagers

Labels: Christians, idiots, politics, religion, school, science

Labels: Conservatives, idiots, Internet, Nazis, school

Trash it. Start over. It's crap.

Labels: anecdote, idiots, Impulse Nine, music, school, teaching

Labels: poliics, rant, school

Labels: high, life, philosophy, school

• Do my taxes.
• How the current health care system works
• The relationship between taxes and government benefits
• The military-industrial complex
• The effect of fanaticism in religion
  

Labels: health care, high, military, politics, rant, religion, school, taxes

• ACC101 Financial Accounting
• ACC204 Individual Tax Accounting
• ART128 Digital Photography I
• ART232 Digital Photography II
• ART160 Ceramics I (Took this a long time ago, but I was awful at it, mostly because I didn't really have the time to do it properly)
  
• ART215 Painting II (to finish the paintings I've already started)
• AUT129 Automotive Electrical Fundamentals and Applications
• BCT101 Principles of Construction
• BCT114 Blueprint Reading
• BUS100 Introduction to Busines
• BUS125 eCommerce
• CUL140 Culinary Principles (there are other cooking classes in the 'personal development' category)
• DAR111 Typography
• DAR115 Digital Video Editing
• DAR122 Desktop Graphics: Adobe Illustrator
  
• DAR124 Writing for Film and Television
  
• DAR175 Cinematography
• DAR215 Advanced Cinematography
• DAR218 Introduction to Film Music
• Early Childhood Education - basically everything not related to running a day care
  
• ECE107 Human Development and Relations
• ECE108 Literature/Social Studies for Children
• ECE117 Child Growth and Development
• ECE124 Math and Science for Children
• ECE125 Nutrition, Health, and Safety for the Young Child
• ECE211 Inclusion of Young Children with Special Needs
• ECE240 Assessment of Young Children
• Various EDU classes relating to getting my teacher's certification in Arizona
• FSS126 Intermediate Basketball
• FSS127 Advanced Basketball
• HIS114 Japanese Civilization
• HUM131 Mythology
• IDE100 Introduction to Interior Design
• IDE111 Fundamentals of Interior Design
• IDE155 Space Planning I
• JPN101 Elementary Japanese I
• JPN102 Elementary Japanese II
• JPN108 Japanese Anime
  
• JPN201 Intermediate Japanese I
  
• JPN202 Intermediate Japanese II
• LIT261 Modern Literature
• LIT262 American Poets
• MUS127 Aural Perception I (took this a long time ago...)
• MUS129 Aural Perception II
• MUS154 Jazz Improvisation
• MUS224 Aural Perception III
• MUS225 Aural Perception IV
• MUS257 Music Recording and Production
• MUP162 Guitar I
  
• MUP172 Guitar II
• MUP262 Guitar III
• MUP272 Guitar IV
• MUP164 Piano I
• MUP174 Piano II
• MUP264 Piano III
• MUP274 Piano IV
• MUP166 Voice I
  
• MUP176 Voice II
• MUP266 Voice III
  
• MUP276 Voice IV
• PHI120 Introduction to Logic
• REL130 Asian Religions
  
• REL234 Islam
• SPA201 Intermediate Spanish I
• SPA202 Intermediate Spanish II
• THE149 Introduction to Acting I
• THE151 Introduction to Acting II
• WLD110 Basic Arc and Oxyacetylene Welding
• WLD160 Arc Welding
• WRT126 Basics of Short Story Writing
• WRT206 Short Story Writing
  

Labels: ambition, college, music, school, To-Do

Labels: 301, Eastpointe, impulse designs, photography, Ricoh GX100, school, taxes, work

Labels: BASIS, blog, design, family, jobs, mixing, music, MySpace, school

I literally had a dream last night that I had been nominated for President of the USA by the people that knew me. For no other reason but to make me feel better about my country, I'll probably write a few blogs about what I'd do in the interminable distance between now and January 20, 2009.

My main concerns are tax efficiency. medicare, military efficiency, educational inflation, good-will terror fighting, and Social Security. I'll tackle them in that order.

I also hope that now, with my life going the way I more-or-less like it, I can consistently update this blog and things like it (such as my car's blog), take care of my own finances, and have a consistent schedule.

Labels: Bush, insurance, military, poliics, school, Social Security

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

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

For some reason, I remember his book (he wrote it) on physics and how it was amusing that he put a list of examples of Decibel levels. I will put it here for your and my amusement - sounds you can barely hear to sounds you'll hear just once...

15 dB - Lower limit of hearing
30 dB - Quiet library, whispers
40 dB - Living room, refrigerator
50 dB - Normal conversation
60 dB - Sewing machine, A/C unit
70 dB - Vacuum cleaner, hair dryer
80 dB - Alarm clock, garbage disposal
90 dB - Subway, lawn mower
100 dB - Chainsaw, pneumatic drill
120 dB - Rock band at the speakers
130 dB - Pain threshold
140 dB - Gunshot, jet plane
160 dB - Instant deafness
180 dB - Rocket launching pad
190 dB - Violent rupture of the eardrums

I... sometimes grin at the last one. I am probably disturbed, but it amuses me to no end. The idea that Spinal Tap really could've found the '11' that actually made their audiences' head explode.

Currently listening : Witching Hour By Ladytron

Labels: Brophy, high, physics, school, teaching

I decided recently that I'm still a pretty big slacker. So I'm trying an experiment. I'm letting myself slack to an extent, but I'm limiting my options to "acceptable" ways of slacking. I've decided that all of these things are ways I can allow my self to slack off:

• Post a MySpace blog.
• Play guitar and work on Ignition (my new album).
• Dream up new Art class assignments.
• Consider and note new ideas for my car.
• Update my homepage.

I'm hoping that by doing this, I'll either stop slacking or at least, have a good blog, finished album, an interesting Art class, an awesome car, and a cool homepage by the time I learn not to slack.

To clean the apartment to help prepare to move; I've already fixed a toilet and am about 7/8ths of the way through re-organizing and going through all of our files (W2's, reciepts, titles, etc.).

This also has other, cooler things I can do with a week of time on my hands. I inherited a pile of about 300 CD's from Maloney's when they went with an all-Mp3 based system. A lot of them are crap, and a lot of them are scratched, but I figure this is as good as any an opportunity to add to my Mp3 collection.

I can attempt to give Rachel a functioning computer (again). I even have a legit copy of XP to use now, too, so that'll save some headache.

And to plan for the rest of the semester at school. I really jumped into the semester but had a lot of problems with organization. Now that I'm more or less caught up with that part (heh, though I still have a huge pile o' grading to do yet), I can start planning lessons a bit better, maybe through the whole year (I hope).

Currently reading : Silverlock By John Myers Myers

Labels: BASIS, blog, cars, Ignition, Maloney's, mp3, MySpace, school, taxes, teaching

The last post was put up around midnight on Tuesday, January 31st. The previous day, Monday, started out looking pretty bleak. I had 2 days left in the month, lots of bills and basically no money.

A few weeks previous, I had become a member of the Maloney's Rejects. The week before that, Rachel and I had both been sick with a fever for a week (being absent for a week contributed strongly to the Reject thing, to top it off). So we had missed something like 2/3rds of our income for the month, and didn't even have the nice buffer we expected out of what turned out to be a placid New Year's Night at Maloney's. I will unleash the bile I have stored up about that at another time.

I got so desperate to find employment, I was going to be a DJ at TD's (a strip club). I applied for Unemployment and Food Stamps.

But let's back up even more. A few days before even this, I found myself tutoring a grade-school kid about the physical properties of light (and Bernoulli's Principle also and how it powers flight). I decided I ought to look for a job tutoring at a Charter school (which doesn't require a teaching degree)... and promptly did not do that at all. At least not until the Monday that started our story.

That Monday, I started calling all of the Charter schools in Tucson, in alphabetical order, and trying to find a job tutoring. One did decide to give me an interview the next day - BASIS [sic.] Tucson.

So I showed up at BASIS Tucson, and was shooed in to talk to Olga Block, the director. Olga was from Eastern Europe, shrewd, and to the point. We talked about what educational experience I had - lots of individual tutoring in Okinawa, basically - and talked for about 20 minutes. She then told me that she didn't need me in Tucson, or for that matter to teach any of the subjects I had listed. She wanted me up in Scottsdale to teach kids there Art. She wanted me there as soon as possible, and sent me to check out the Art class in that school.

During the meeting, I got a phone call from the Unemployment Office, who wanted to interview me to verify eligibility. Obviously, I never answered.

I arranged to borrow AZ and Tasha's car (Rachel's being needed to get her to work and mine was still in the shop) and stay with my Grandfather-In-Law, Howard. He and his wife are ridicuously kind people - they are the same ones that put together that truck of Rachel's and gave it to us.

I was to check out BASIS on Thursday, and do a demo lesson on Friday. This of course is an insanely tiny amount of time to put together a lesson, but I did it. Turns out, though, that the regular teachers were the ones teaching the Art classes.

Why?

Well ... the short version goes something like this. Back in August, Mrs. Bae was a fine Art teacher who got pregnant and took her maternity leave. She had a few subs while she was gone, naturally. Then in October she came back ... and left just two weeks later when her husband was promoted and moved to L.A.. Then they got another teacher or two. The most recent one tripped on a backpack and smashed her head into a chair, suffering severe head trauma and bleeding all over the place to the horror of her class. Naturally, she wasn't going to teach for awhile and in the meantime the other teachers had taken turns on their breaks substituting.

Howard and Anita (the grandparents in law) live in Peoria, and with rush-hour traffic I needed a full hour and a half and almost fifty miles of driving to get to work. This is not fun.

I arrived on time on Thursday, though, and when I got there, there really wasn't an Art class to observe (what with the teachers not doing Art) - so I started teaching. I had to improvise 4 Art lessons with kids I'd never met in a situation I'd never been in. It was stressful but fun in a mad way and I made it through Thursday pretty well. That night, I had the "let's talk about God and politics" conversation with Howard and despite my comparatively wishy-washy stances on Christianity (I am Catholic, but not anywhere nearly as religious as he is as a Protestant), it went perfectly well.

On Friday, I improvised several lessons and ... totally had the worst time with the one I had actually planned. Rather ironic, really, that the bosses (being Olga and the Director) saw my worst lesson.

But they hired me anyway. Almost on a lark, and because so many had just ejected due to burnout. I think they could tell that I was ridiculously enthusiastic and not so subject to just bailing out on them.

That night I drove down to Tucson quite elated, and came back up to Prescott to buy AZ & Tasha's new car (a '63 VW), and say hello to the in-laws who live there. The next Tuesday was my first day back, though I had to drive Rachel's truck all the time. Since then, I've been staying with my Mom who lives in a much more central location in Phoenix and my transit time went from and hour and a half to about 30 minutes.

And of course now I have more things to talk about: the school, the kids, and so on but that will undoubtedly take up the next several entries...

Currently reading : The Enchanted Forest Chronicles: Dealing with Dragons / Searching for Dragons / Calling on Dragons / Talking to Dragons By Patricia C. Wrede

Labels: art, BASIS, debt, DJ, in-laws, Maloney's, money, school, Scottsdale, teaching

Sociology is applied Psychiatry
Psychiatry is applied Psychology
Psychology is applied Biology.
Biology is applied Chemistry
Chemistry is applied Physics
Physics is applied Mathematics
Mathematics is applied Existentialism
Existentialism is basically mental masturbation.

Therefore everything is applied mental masturbation.

Q.E.D.

I should mention that the fact that Everything's bull doesn't strip Everything of its worth - just that it can't be taken seriously. Lord knows I need to take things less seriously, and yet, do more about them...

Labels: joke, philosophy, random, religion, school

Labels: BASIS, jobs, money, school

Let me tell you a few things that, in retrospect, are clear to me from my experiences with this situation.

First, you're right you will very rarely use algebra in real, adult life if you are pursuing a career in writing, graphic design, photography, philosophy, and so on. You will need arithmetic to balance your checkbook, figure out how much to tip a nice server (when youre in college, this can be interpreted how much to tip in order to ask for a date), and how much your student loans will cost you and for how long. You will need it from time to time if youre running a small business, or are figuring other things out that need the simple algebra like solving (7-1)² = 36. But thats the easy stuff, really, compared to matrices and calculus.

So now that you can feel good in that trademark cynical teenage way about being right about never using it, let me tell you why you still need to pass the class.

Situation #1: I have lately taken up the idea of owning and running my own business. Or at least, I'm moonlighting legally so that the IRS doesnt bang down my door and shoot me. To do so, I have to read many pages of very confusing documents.

Situation #2: I have also recently gotten my first car, a 62 Volkswagen Beetle (baja style). While these cars are simple to fix as cars go, I still have had to learn a lot about my car in order to properly diagnose and fix problems with the fuel tank, fuel line, fuel pump, fuel filter, carburetor, air filter, distributor, spark plugs, coil, speedometer, and so on and so forth.

Situation #3: And of course, theres my endless work on websites that force me to learn java, CSS, HTML, XML, server-side includes and so forth.

Why am I telling you about all these things Ive learned over the last year or so? Because just like your math class, they were hard to learn. They were a bone fide pain in the ass. That is to say, they took some serious consideration and thought and mulling over before I understood them.

This is why your math class is important for later. Yes, it teaches you how long it will take for Joe to meet Fred at point X when they take off at different times at different speeds. But much more importantly, it teaches you to sit down and comprehend something that is difficult to comprehend. I get the vast majority of my information quickly and easily on the Net via Google or by asking friends. However there are many situations youll face where there is either no-one to tell you and answer, or that the simple way of explaining something is still very complicated.

Math, then, for people who hate math, isnt about your ability to do math nearly as much as its about your ability to sit and comprehend things that are difficult for you. If you master this ability to be unafraid of complicated concepts, consider your math class to have taught you something more valuable than anything else youve ever learned the ability to learn.

Currently listening : Hôtel Costes: Quatre By Stéphane Pompougnac Release date: 12:00 AM

Labels: advice, high, random, rant, school, stories, work

Labels: college, random, school

She went to the U of A the same time I did, and went into the theater. I didn't see her a lot, but went to her shows (though often she never knew - I never did work up that nerve) when I could and have always suspected she'd do well. Since I've been looking up my old friends and aquaintences, I looked her up.

And she's been on "The O.C.", and "That 70's Show", and she's got a new movie. Awesome?! YES! Go Catherine! Woot! I wonder if I can even still contact her.

I also found Steph, whom I also had a terrible crush in my early years at UA, but hung out with me and introduced me to more super cool things than I could properly list. This is fun. I just hope they'll remember me.

Currently reading : BLACK SHRIKE By Alistair Maclean

Labels: Brophy, college, friends, movies, nostalgia, school, stories, true, TV

Assignment 1:

1 The influence of foreign languages - Latin and both Norman and Central French in particular - has always been important in the history of English. Explain in detail the patterns of influence of these languages (chiefly lexical but also orthographic, grammatical, and morphological) on English from the early Middle English times through the eighteenth century.

2 Suppose that the Beowulf poet, Chaucer, and Shakespeare were all seated in a room attempting to communicate with one another about matters in general. Explain in detail the advantages and disadvantages that each of them would have in speaking with the other two. Would any of those advantages or disadvantages be significantly different if they were writing to each other instead?

Assignment 2

1 Explain in a clear, orderly way the major phonological phenomena affecting the English language from Common Germanic times through the Old English period.

2 Clearly explain in as much detail as you can the major morphological features of Old English verbs, nouns, and adjectives that make those parts of speech different from their forms in Present-Day English.

um wow...

Currently listening : Led Zeppelin By Led Zeppelin

Labels: college, frightening thought, Rachel, school, stories, true