multitasking

thoughts may be even more scattered than normal - am trying to rip some of my cds while i type this up. so please forgive minor spelling mistakes, as i'm sure you already do.

technology at school has failed me - i am unable recently to update edline, the communication website we use at mason, because of some security glitch. when i try to update, i get a dialog box that no matter which button i press, causes the entire browser to shut down. and then today my yahoo! mail would not load properly so i was unable to reply to email. tech knows about it but it's amazing how dependent i've become on this technology that even ten years ago didn't exist. was thinking about this last week when the stapler on the copy machine wasn't working and i had to (gasp!) staple by hand. i'm by no means a luddite, but sometimes i wonder if we aren't too dependent on technology to survive.

he says as he rips cds to his portable drive....

i need to stop paying attention to the elections. was watching keith olbermann (thanks to brian for getting me addicted) and they reported ferraro's comments that obama would not be where he is now if he wasn't black. *sigh* is there truth to that? possibly. i am sure there are other senators who would be more qualified to be president but who don't have the personality or charisma to do so. and there is that "historic" quality to the campaign. but to claim that is the primary reason he is currently beating clinton in the campaign is short sighted at best and racist at worst. and to make it worse, clinton has made little attempt to distance herself from the remarks. it's almost like she's happy to let someone else do the dirty work she cannot soil her hands with. again, it's tactics like this that make it impossible for me to imagine voting for her. if i wanted tactics like that, i'd be a republican.

sorry. that was uncalled for.

true, but uncalled for.

productivity continues: i mapped out the trimester. turns out i don't have enough time to show either into the wild or to kill a mockingbird to my classes. may have to see if i can at the very least show clips, though i prefer to show whole piece if possible. of course, this leaves me with a bit of a dilemma as far as into the wild goes. i finally watched it this past weekend and they did a decent job of translating the overall story to the screen, but not most of the controversy. chris comes out the hero instead of a conflicted young man. the dilemma for me is i cannot show it as is to my students. too many f-bombs, too much gratuitous nudity (which isn't in the book, at least the nudity. the f-bomb only twice). as i watched, i could see where i could make cuts that would make it school appropriate. but then aren't i engaging in the same kind of censorship i get incensed about from companies that make "clean" versions of dvds? would it be violating my own feelings on art and censorship? so maybe it's best that i cannot show the whole thing anyway - at least with clips i can pick and choose what to show. of course, i think the students might be able to follow the story better if they saw the whole thing. guess we'll have to see how it goes.

time to head to bed. been nice to have a couple of hours at the beginning of the day to not teach. and my class has a couple of students who take a while to finish the tests, so we haven't had any problems with discipline since they just have to sit there when they finish and count the holes in the ceiling or read a non-textbook or sleep. be over halfway done tomorrow. it's the writing test, the one i'm most nervous about. i pray the effort we put into helping them become better writers becomes evident tomorrow - and that no one finishes in 30 minutes as seems to happen every year. grrr.

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Now playing: XTC - I'm The Man Who Murdered Love
via FoxyTunes