Boats

You probably don’t know who The Lonely Island is. You might know who Andy Samburg is. You also might live under a rock. Anyway, the Lonely Island is basically Andy Samburg and his comedy buddies, Akieva and Jorma. They have last names, but I don’t feel like looking them up. It’s mainly the stuff they did before SNL hired them and made Andy Samburg a household name (not that I want to acknowledge that SNL has the power to make anyone a household name anymore). My person™ introduced them to me lo these many years ago, through a little something we like to call Episode One of The ‘Bu:

(The only other episode of The ‘Bu it’s essential for you to watch is Episode Eight.)

The Lonely Island did a pilot for a sketch comedy show on Fox called Awesometown. I like the theme song.

I consider “Just Two Guys” the opus of The Lonely Island:

If you don’t like it we can’t be friends anymore.

The following showed up in a post in my Google Reader. While it isn’t nearly as amazing as “Just Two Guys, ” I think it’s pretty fabulous.

There is never a bad time to decide you want to be Angelina Jolie.

The Huffington Post posted this brilliant commentary on the crazy Octomom, pointing out she is looking more and more like Angelina Jolie: Does Nadya Shuleman Think She’s Angelina Jolie?

“Both women are 33 and are mothers to arguably, at least for now, the two most famous broods in the world. They also survived divorce, longed for children and chose to become single parents.

Consider this: In photos of Suleman pre-octuplets out Monday, she looks noticeably different. She has had what appears to be lip implants or filler injections to pump up her pucker. She’s also evidently had a nose job. Both nose and lips now mimic the features of Jolie, as others have pointed out. Scroll for photos and a closer look. Suleman already had brown eyes and has now grown her dark brown hair all the way down her back.”

I know that when I decide to spend all the money I don’t have on unnecessary fertility treatments to expand my already expansive broad, I will follow it up by unnecessary plastic surgery to help me follow in the physical as well as motherly steps of Angelina Jolie.

I hope I have everyone’s support.

Totally outrageous

One of my favorite professors at OU was Dr. Jeremy Webster. Not only did he encourage us to call him by his nickname, Jem, which led to many a singalong in the office of the M.A.’s (as well as many a singalong over e-mail), but he showed me a way to legitimize my love for whores by combining it with the study of literature. In fact, I’d have to say that my love for whores was exponentially increased by one of the best classes ever taught at OU, “God and Sex in Literature,” a class Jem explained to us on the first day was going to be a lot more Sex than God. He also won our hearts by admitting to enjoying the view of the male undergrad butts when he walked around campus, and a moment that will be burned in my memory forever, “I don’t know what y’all’s porn is like, but that sort of thing doesn’t happen in our porn.”

Anyway, Jem has a blog that I subscribe to, where he features songs he likes and movie reviews of obscure films I didn’t know existed, as well as recaps of amazing trips he takes. He provides us with the Hottie of the Month, a new and exciting way to look at the movers and shakers of the 18th century. One of his more recent posts, though, was about his theme for the year. Instead of making some sort of New Year’s resolution or other such nonsense, Jem has decided to do the following:

“First off, it’s been really good having a theme for the year. It’s given me an immediate gauge to help me decide whether I’m going in the right direction or getting off track. All I have to do is ask myself two simple questions:

1. Is thinking about or doing X, Y, or Z living in the here and now? and
2. Is X, Y, or Z what I really want?”

I’m not going to lie to you: I obviously cried when I read his blog. Then I thought about it. Maybe I cried some more. I don’t remember. The point is that this plan makes sense. I feel like I’ve gotten off track, terribly off track, and I need to figure out when I got off track, how far off track I’ve gotten, and what I need to do to rectify the situation.

Once upon a time I wanted to be a writer. I seem to have given that up. Not just the wanting to be a writer as my Full Time Job, but the writing itself. I don’t even know what I’d want to write about if I sat down and wrote. I don’t even know what genre I’d like to write in. I do know that I watch John Green’s video blogs and I’m struck by several things:

1) John Green is totally on my list of 5 people I get to sleep with if the opportunity presents itself, even though I’m not sure I really want to waste any quality time I could spend with him on something as pointless as sex.

2) I lust over the bookshelves in the background of his video blog, and I lust over the fact he has a book on how to arrange a home library that he used to arrange the books on his bookshelves. (The Goat has promised we’ll have bookshelves like that, but I completely and totally believe that you can’t have books like him on bookshelves like his unless you’re a Real Writer.)

3) I have read his newest YA novel, Paper Towns, and I’m pretty sure I could do that. Back in that once upon a time when I wanted to be a writer, I really wanted to write YA lit. Reading Paper Towns made me stop and think about how I’ve never even tried to do something I think I could do.

4) If I ever get to be a real teacher, I would make sure to show John Green’s video blogs (and his brother’s, for that matter) to my class, because he’s interesting and funny and smart and dorky and a writer, and I would hope it’d entice them into reading and writing and being interesting, funny, smart, and dorky.

5) Why am I not being a writer? He’s a Real Writer, with books and a contract with a publishing house and whatnot, but he wasn’t always a Real Writer. At some point he was just a Writer, and before that a writer.

So I sort of want to follow Jem’s formula for the year, and I want to stop acting like everything in the world is conspiring to keep me from being a Writer. Or at least a writer. It’s hard, though. I keep hearing that I can’t quit school and student teaching because I’m so close to being done. I’ve actually been told that since my first semester at the Institution of My Choosing, and I’ve heard it so much it doesn’t mean anything anymore, even though now it’s true. True-er. I’m also having the “I can’t get anything done because I’m not taking any medication for the crazy and therefore every single little thing makes me distracted and stops me from actually working” disease. That’s a horrible disease, by the way, because I really can’t settle down and get school stuff done. I also can’t get anything non-school related done. I can literally  get stuck turning in a circle (it happened Sunday night), not sure which direction to go, because I can’t make a decision on what I need to do first. The sucky thing is that I can do non-essential, procrastinating things (i.e. play Diner Dash: Flo Through Time) for hours. I’m so stressed out and anxious and confused over what to do in order to get the right things done, and sometimes the only thing I can do is pick none of the things I need to. (That could be solved by trying to get some more drugs for the crazy, but the longer you don’t take the drugs for the crazy the less you want to because the more crazy you are, which can only make sense to those who either have the crazy or take drugs for the crazy.)

On my way home yesterday I planned my evening, which involved walking the dog and Wii Fit-ing it up, but I also included time for doing homework and writing lesson plans. But then the dog played with another dog and didn’t need a walk, I was initially too tired to Wii Fit it up, and then there was a presidential address and the dog threw up and needed cuddles (in the middle of my Wii Fit-ing it up). I did get my homework done, but as it was due last Thursday I’m not too sure it counts as me doing a good job. I haven’t talked to my mom in forever, because that’s at least an hour of my night, which I can’t foresee losing without getting all anxious and guilty, even if I don’t do anything worthwhile in place of it.

How am I supposed to fit trying to write in there?

(In case you’re wondering, I’m totally blogging illegally while at high school being a student teacher. But if I don’t do it now, I won’t do it. And people need me to blog. I can also blog in sections, or look up and pretend to be paying attention, or switch to real work if someone comes too close. I can’t foresee writing-writing in this situation, though, because I don’t write very well if I can’t just write.)

And then there was a bright spot.

My mentor teacher had a table found and delivered to her room for me. I hate it, because it’s some sort of geometric shape I don’t appreciate, where one part is wider than the other, and it hurts my OCD sensibilities. But I have it, which is better than trying to work on a corner of a perfectly rectangular table covered with nonsense that I assume is just recycling waiting to be recycled. It got moved to the other side of the room from my little corner I was stuck in, and this wall had a junction box on it that suspiciously looked like it might be an internet box. I grabbed one of my many trusty ethernet cables lying around my apartment (and by “lying around my apartment” i mean “stored in a box labeled ‘cords’ and stacked neatly in my storage closet”) and, praying to multiple gods who might have some sort of interest in me being connected to the outside world while stuck in high school, I plugged it in. Hooray! Internet! Sure, Facebook is blocked and half the things you might come across when you search on Google are blocked, but I can check my e-mail and write in this blog and generally keep myself from crying while I spend my fifteen minute lunch regretting all the choices I made in my life that have led me to this point.

Now all I need to the ability to leave and go retrieve coffee from a nearby coffeeshop run by hippies that sells only fair trade coffee and My Person™ right nearby for adventures to buggies (also run by hippies) that sell burritos and former alleys turned into restaurant’s that serve delicious bagel sandwiches (again, made by hippies).

Never really thought I’d actually miss Athens…

An inauguration AND a snow day?

(I wasn’t going to be able to watch the inauguration today, but then God shook out his dandruff on our little southernness (that can be a word, right?) and gave us the day off so we can watch. Guess God’s a democrat. Who knew.)

I very rarely proclaim my love for CNN, but I was very much in favor of them interrupting their live shot of the VIP platform and whatnot in order to show us the moving van sitting outside of the White House, with a few boxes stacked around it, waiting to be loaded.

I also need to proclaim my love, just like practically every other single person in the world, for Sasha and Melia Obama.

Something else I’m a fan of.

You might not know that YA means young adult, and it’s the way those of us in the know (and those in the publishing industry and the writing industry and the library world and most everyone else) refer to young adult literature. Through my newfound love of John Green, his brother Hank, Brotherhood 2.0 (now known as The Vlog Brothers), and the Nerdfighters, I was introducted to YA for Obama. On this website, lots of YA authors are contributing blog posts for Obama. YA authors everyone knows, like Judy Blume. I find that very cool.

Enjoyable

Actually, this is more than enjoyable. This is quite enjoyable.

My pretend desk.

I have bad allergies (notacoldnotacoldnotacold) and I don’t feel like doing anything. Therefore, all I’ve been doing at “work” is playing with our new (to us) iMacs. We’ve had a leak in the area where one of the iMacs is going to go, which meant it was on “stand-by” in our equipment room. My boss gave me the iLife 08 CD today so I could install it on the iMacs (why they didn’t have iLife on them to begin with I don’t know), and was told the IT people wanted the disc back when they came by with the reimaged GA computer (no more crappy computer for Sha’Ron!). This meant I had to pull out the “stand-by” iMac and set it up (and can I just say how much I love how setting up an iMac means plugging in exactly 3 things?). The most logical place to do this was my table-desk.Then I took a picture, primarily to make the News Goat jealous. But since I’m so in love with this iMac and pretending this is my real desk forever, I’ve decided to share it with everyone:

Doesn’t this make me look all important and busy and sexy? And caffineated, since I’ve got two coffee cups sitting there. A girl’s got to stay awake.

In other news: I’m wearing a skirt today. What’s that about?

Dream

In my Tuesday and Thursday, 2:00 to 3:15 Come to Jesus Meetin’ (i.e. English Education 591: Principles of Teaching English in Middle and Secondary School), Reverend Dr. F has told us over and over several things:

1) Her age (44).
2) That she has a wonderful husband she has been married to for twenty years
3) Her two year old daughter is wonderful and has changed her life
4) Her parents are wonderful and she still listens to them

Most importantly, though, Reverend Dr. F has explained to us how important it is to be professional during our Field Experience (i.e. Student Teaching Lite: Now with half the calories and a third less fat!). Cover up your tattoos, take our your extraneous piercings, put on make-up (she must know my mother), dress in suits (if you don’t have suits, for goodness sake, buy some, but if you can’t do that this second in time, at least look like you’re the CEO of some Fortune 500 company), and look like adults, gosh darn it, even if you’re just baby-faced college students. Our Field Experience, and even more so our Internship (i.e. Top Shelf Student Teaching), are basically continuous interviews by the high schools and middle schools we’ll be working in, and they need to like what they see from the moment you step in the door on the first day of our Field Experience. (Looks, apparently, are very important to schools, which has to be a relatively new thing, because there were quite a few of my high school teachers who were not even trying a little bit in the appearance category.)

In honor of those threats, idle or otherwise, I redyed the hot pink stripe in my hair today. It will still be bright and obnoxious Tuesday morning at 7:30 AM, when I first grace the halls of the high school I was assigned to for my Field Experience. It will be equally bright and obnoxious at the Come to Jesus Meetin’ that afternoon at 2:00, which I can only hope means a some personal Come to Jesus time with Reverend Dr. F in her office to discuss my obvious breach of The Rules (not that The Rules are official or outlined in anything that I’ve seen, although there’s a lot of stuff I haven’t seen, so they might really be carved into stone and I just choose not to find out).

While I highly doubt I’ll get kicked out of my Field Experience or *gasp* the entire education program, I can dream.

The Stig just makes me happy.

This morning started off to a rousing start with me getting to watch an episode of How Not to Decorate, then Decker arrived on-line and we ended up chasing clips of The Stig around YouTube. (We also tried to plan an impromptu getaway to London, but that was quickly foiled by me being too poor to afford a passport, nonetheless airline tickets and hotel rooms and whatnot.) I present to you one of my favorite ever clips of The Stig, not only because there are British accents and Richard Hammond and a recording of “Mind the gap” in the Underground, but because it shows the creative genius of Top Gear’s writers. They have not only created The Stig as a lean, mean, driving machine, they have created a sort of mythology about him.