What I love best about this movie is the kid in the background who is so completely absorbed in his video game that he's ignoring what's going on. That's life in a boy's dorm room for you.

Not that I've ever, um, lived in a boy's dorm room. We had sex-segregated dormitories at TAC. Little known fact: my college required women to beat a gong and yell "unclean, unclean!" whenever we walked around campus, so that the men could flee ahead of us and avoid becoming tainted.

But at least, unlike at Magdalen, we were not, strictly speaking, required to wear shapeless jumpers made of sackcloth.

when I say pump that
y'all say shit up

pump that
SHIT UP!

pump that
SHIT UP!

when I say stand up
y'all say get up

stand up
GET UP!

stand up
GET UP!

(this lyrical interlude is brought to you by The Roots, and is only one of the many fun games i don't teach the sixth graders)

Collecting books, if you think about it, is an illogical hobby. Books, beside being expensive, are also unwieldy; bookshelves and bookcases take up huge amounts of household space, and books themselves, being heavy, are expensive to ship or transport in the event of a move. Further, there is no terminus in sight for the book collecter. No matter how narrow the focus of your collecting, you can never own ALL THE BOOKS for the genre in question. In addition, books don't tend to appreciate in value in anything near as dramatic a fashion as, say, baseball cards, or DNA samples from major celebrities. Mostly, they depreciate. Your 7.99 Penguin paperback edition of Moby Dick is worth 0.50 to the kid who buys it from your yard sale twenty years hence (generous estimate).

I'm thinking of taking up a more rational waste of money. Such as playing the lottery.

Whenever I visit my grandparents, I end up going to Mass with them, and consequently sitting in the Old People section at church. The Old People are a jolly bunch, cataracts and all. As the only person in the vicinity whose limbs still function properly, I am often the recipient of helpful advice about being young and spry, which can be summed up as follows:

- drive fast
- ENJOY life, and
- don't get old.

And they would know...

1. As long as y'all are waiting for the deus ex machina, you might as well get a hoodie advertising that fact.

2. My friend Charlie sent me a sunprint he made of a human hand touching an octopus. Q. How cool is that? A. Very cool. That octopus died in the name of ART.

3. I've told my boyf in the past that my car is mysteriously connected to the aether in such a way that washing it summons a rain storm. Which is why my car is perpetually covered in dust and bird droppings. I'm just looking out for my fellow sun lovers. Fool, he heeded not my words of warning, and washed my car last week while I was visiting my family (aside: awww). As a consequence, the rains have begun.

My little brother T, who just turned 16, really really wants me to get him an airsoft gun for his birthday. However, inasmuch as he already injured himself this weekend by propelling himself into a wall while riding on a furniture dolly, I think I may hold off on the airsoft gun for...oh...a decade or so.

ubi caritas et amor / Deus ibi est

While trying to drive home the distinction between material and immaterial, I asked my seventh graders whether you can touch/taste/see/smell your own soul. Cue an entire classroom of squirrelly proto-adolescents trying to smell each other's souls.

Just shoot me now...

(it's fun, really it is.)

i know where the summer goes

Sometimes, I feel as if my line of work (the edumacating of the Catholic private school students) is not where I should pause. After all, although I am kept on my toes intellectually, I am not really learning anything new. Rather, I'm taking what I know already (be it pre-algebra or sixth grade catechesis) and figuring out ways of presenting it effectively to the middle school set. I crave more in the way of discussion and debate than I get in my day to day life. I haven't yet resorted to making hand puppets for each of the Pre-Socratic philosophers and talking to myself, but it may come to that.

On the other hand, I'm certain that I am performing a good and useful function right now, albeit a humble one. Forming young people in the Faith is necessary. Teaching them how to read critically and write well is necessary. My students need the help I provide. Would I be needed, really, in another field? Also, the sense that I am responsible for providing a good moral example for forty-odd souls keeps me on the straight and narrow (*cough* more or less *cough*). Would I be as good, elsewhere?

Anyway. PHILOSOPHIC SOCK PUPPETS will make up for the lack of a philosophobabble fellowship. I'm designing a line of them. Hegel is particularly entertaining to animate, but his button eyes keep falling off.

I was travelling this weekend, and attended Mass at a random parish in Manhattan Beach. The priest said something about "blessing of the animals," but I was still taken aback when I walked out of the church and saw eighty people on the steps with dogs on leashes and cats in carriers.

I noted with dismay that said people had only elected to have their larger mammals blessed; nary a goldfish or gerbil in sight. Surely there are divine consequences for having an un-hallowed hamster.