Happy times

Continuing with my recent affinity for Miss Janet, here is a good video I doubt that most people have seen:



This video is great and stands on its own. But it is really getting it done because her producer is channeling iconic images from Drum Magazine, Samuel Fosso, Malick Sidibe, and Seydou Keita. I hug all of those works of art, so this video just punches me in the face. If you ever need a jolt in the artistic-creativity bone, just learn about a little bit of South African, Nigerian, or Democratic Republic of the Congo history. And the fact that those artists had some feelings. And no time in which to share them.

*If you click on the Samuel Fosso link, you will go to the Jack Shainman Gallery page. One of my all-time favorite artists, El Anatsui, has a huge show coming up at this gallery in January. I'm a tad excited.

Holiday spirit

If you need some motivation to join the festivities (and a way to waste some time), enjoy this gem:

We Hate Sheep. We Love Holiday Sweaters.

Time to embrace your inner tacky-elementary-school-teacher.

For keeps this time.

That Jigglypuff has seen better days.

Just kidding. He's at the top of our first Christmas tree. His life just gained new meaning.

When I realized that I could rig a paper clip to perch Jigglypuff where an angel or star usual goes, I think my general reaction was that Jigglypuff is both an angel and a star.

Voila!



While I was searching for that video, I found... this. BRACE YOU SELFS.

Seriously this time.

It's not as if the missing H fell off, leaving an empty space between the T and the ANKS. I'm also fairly certain the church had enough letters H to go around; the other side was doing just fine.

So I have deduced that this church sanctions the giving of tanks as presents. Or this church sanctions the attacking with tanks of others. In all things.

Like this guy:



That's my kind of church!

My version of Thanksgiving.

"Hello, children! Buy a Christmas tree from me! Do you see how happy I am? Ha ha ha! I love to welcome the children!"




"SO I CAN EAT THEIR SOULS!"

Tanksgiving

For our break, we decided to drive home to North Carolina to visit out families. We left on Wednesday afternoon and stopped over to spend the night in Baltimore; as always, Thanksgiving traffic was a treasure. We made it to Baltimore over an hour and a half later than we expected, but the hotel was comfortable enough.

In the morning, we headed down to my grandparents' farm north of Durham for Thanksgiving lunch. As we were one of the first to arrive, Marcus helped my mom deep-fry the Thanksgiving turkey (this is the first year this debacle was attempted-- luckily, no one died or was even severely burned in the process). Tim, my stepfather, had his yearly beer-- and two more-- so he was being overly helpful (and making some winning jokes).

After leaving the farm around three, having barely eaten anything, we headed over to Lee and Katie's for Thanksgiving dinner, where we had a delicious meal and some wonderful dinner conversation. Jenny, the oldest niece, read Table Topic questions, and we answered the questions one after another. Quickly, the girls got bored and decided to watch Disney Channel, while the adult conversation turned to family history, the ranking of presidents, and how war generals earn their stars.

We left Lee and Katie's fairly early, drove back to my mom's house, and passed out. The next day, Friday, we had a leisurely breakfast with my family, then took my little sister, Zoe, over to play with Jenny and Reagan. The girls watched movies, ate candy, played outside, and jumped on Jenny's bed. After the girls wore Zoe out, we drove back to the house and had dinner. Mom challenged us to a game of Scrabble, in which she, of course, trounced us both.

When we headed back to our room for a good night's sleep, we discovered Marcus' USB drive broken completely in two. A visiting friend had carelessly sat upon our computer, breaking off the USB drive connected to it. Needless to say, this resulted in serious panic. Marcus lost many of his school plans, but luckily a majority of the data stored on the drive was backed up on our home computer. Unfortunately, he still had to recreate several assignments and rubrics on top of the grading he still had to finish.

Saturday morning, we again had a leisurely breakfast then went with my parents to buy a Christmas tree for them and ourselves. Every year since Mom and Tim married, we have shopped at the same Christmas tree lot to get our trees. That lovely gentleman is the marker for the lot. Our apartment is extremely small, and we barely have enough room for our furniture, but Mom and Tim insisted we have our own live Christmas tree for the holiday season. We bought the smallest one on the lot, even though it was still a few inches taller than me. After rearranging the trunk and stuffing the tree inside, we headed to Winston-Salem to see if anyone could help recover the data from the USB drive. Unfortunately, it was hopeless, but we returned home for lunch and to help set up their Christmas tree. We left in the early afternoon, seeing this little gem along the way, and again stopped halfway, this time in Harrisburg, VA.

Sunday morning, we woke up early and got back on the road for the remainder of our trip. There was little traffic, although New Jersey drivers always make me want to gouge my eyes with a spoon. Of course, when I was completely exhausted from driving on only fifteen minutes from our apartment, traffic stopped completely. We moved at a snail's pace for over 45 minutes, but I found that this little lady is the solution for frustration:




*This was my first time watching the actual video, and how are her versions of Michael's moves? Got'em! Bide your time for 3:17.

So after some Janet and some tears, we made it home. After unloading the car and buying enough food to at least eat tomorrow, we set up the Christmas tree! It's a little beauty, made with old white lights and hand-me-down ornaments from my mom and Marcus' mom. We are both thankful for our loving and generous families. We are incredibly lucky.

And, of course, I wouldn't be married to the man I am if this little guy wasn't strapped to the top of our Christmas tree.

Every wish and dream and happy home.

Once upon a time, I found an empty classroom at Wake Forest University while walking to my own class. This empty classroom had been readied for instruction, so the overhead projector was on and projecting a blank Word document onto a screen at the front of the room. Someone -- the teacher, I imagine -- had left his or her materials on the round table in the center of the room (which was a computer lab).

To help, I typed the lyrics to the theme song to Ducktales into the Word document. I enlarged the font so that it was easier to read. Then I left.

Once upon the future, I will have a band that plays music, and it will consist of my family, and we will cover this song almost exactly as it was written:



I will be so happy on that day.

Not ponytails or cottontails.

We just love these. There are awesome guitars and feelings here. Try to guess which one of us picked each of these!

Websites.

*As promised at the end of this ridiculous post, here's a more accessible link to Cat's website, which was marginalized by Marcus' ranting and raving like a madman.

The other day, the two of us were looking for something on our older computer (a workhorse that's just about ready for the glue factory) when we stumbled across the website Marcus built to help him get a teaching job. And since I'm Marcus, I can tell you that there is almost no explanation for why that website helped me get a teaching job. It only proves that I'm insane.

First of all, I built it on a server I bought a few years ago. Haphazardous.com has, right now, the school newspaper I helped the kids build this fall, some garbage assignments for my classes -- and, of course, a link through that image in the lower-right corner to my first reference to a Nintendo game. This has been here since I emailed my site to about twenty districts looking for work.

(Pressing "A" should actually make the picture advance. Once upon a time, I had some tricks up my sleeve...)

Anyway, this is how I landed my job. There is no way any of you are bored enough to read much of that, even though I can reason through deduction that you are very bored; you are reading this post, after all. But there is too much. Let me sum up:

The site map links to three gems that should have gotten me laughed out of any potential interviews: my Wake Forest site, a Japanese postcard and a portrait by my niece, Jenny. (By "gotten me laughed out of," I mean "gotten me elected superintendent, obviously.)

That portrait is actually such a winner that I will post it here:

That is such a keeper!

Anyway, it's my old Wake Forest site that puzzles me now. I got a Master's Degree in part by building this one. I don't know now whether it is cause for me to love myself or be very depressed...

If you go back to that main page, you can see a picture of me. By clicking on the eyes, there are secret pages to visit. What's not so hidden is all the craziness: the porpoise thing, the picture of the phoenix from Ranma 1/2 as a major link... I think you can just start clicking randomly and quickly find a reason or two not to put me in a classroom with impressionable youngsters.

(In the "cause for me to love myself" column, I put the "clay brick express dancing" page.)

The point might be that the only page I did remove was the one labeled "Personal" in the right menu, meaning that I felt something in there was somehow worse than the rest. But I was wrong. I should have kept that link; those would have been awesome phone interviews.

Here it is. It's still online, just inaccessible from the other site. Here's what I notice:

The music I must have posted at one point is gone, because I realized that my music is garbage and threw it back in the gutter, because the place for garbage is in the gutter, not my mind. There's a very small image in the bottom bar that links to real victory of the NES kind. And there are Marvel Series II cards.

(In this same, strange self-love/self-hate session, I found other cards I made over the last couple of years. Maybe I will get over myself long enough to post some of them -- the hip-hop cards or the Japanese folklore ones, probably.)

The cards I posted make me happy. There are ones for my siblings and some other crazy bits, and they all load in a separate window with a front and a back. I guess I was planning on personalizing the fronts for the last few, but I've never started a project and then abandoned it before.

Here's the card I made for my brother, in case you need a little enticing:



Oh, the suicide joke! I wish I could bring that back. Probably not appropriate for a high school teacher... or is it?

I just like that no one, the wife included, gets the affection with which that joke is delivered -- except for the siblings. Once upon a time, I was in hysterics on the floor of a lobby of a theater where my brother and sister and I were going to see the musical Rent; I was shaking, really, and I was in tears from laughing hard; and the whole thing was due to me repeatedly saying, "Have you guys heard about this crazy new craze that's sweeping the nation? It's called suicide." I miss them.

Before we go, let's post a real website. This is Catherine's portfolio and such -- with artwork, cuteness, dashing and daring -- and it has been updated in the last week or so with newness.

(I'm [Marcus again] going to put another link to her site up at the top of this ridiculous post.)

Still curious about this puma.

I want a ferret.

But the wife has suggested that if I were to buy a ferret, she would throw it into the wild.

When I was a youngster, my brother and I had ferrets. Lots of them. They were adorable -- when they weren't destroying everything around. Actually, that's when they were the most adorable. Some days, I'd find them curled up inside the couch, having dug their way into it, filled it with poop and my keys, and gone to sleep.

I treasure those days. No, really. I'm serious. I want a ferret.

The wife says no, but I have a question:

What if it came with a lion?

Well, it's super early, the boy just left for school, and I am home alone -- again. So! As opposed to doing housework and those things that "school" wants me to do, I believe I shall post some of the winners which I have been emailed in the past few days.

For when you need a card to accurately express how you feel: http://www.someecards.com/

For when you need to do some thinking about things: Yinka Shonibare, ex.



For when you really need some french fries with gravy and cheese curds:



For any time at all:



For when you are worried there is not enough love in the world:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/7094551.stm

For when you have a school project on the environment:




For when you need a song stuck in your head:



*Wait for the shift half way through.

Soon there will be updates on our Thanksgiving excursions.

The best beards ever.

Red Fish: I have a beard. Some would say it's a manly beard, if "some" is me in front of my mirror in the morning. Maybe it's no "World Champion" beard, but who's the judge of that?

Blue Fish: Turns out it's...

The guys from the World Beard and Moustache Championship

RF: I like any group that has a "full beard freestyle" competition. That produced this little gem:



RF: That's special.

BF: It's not that I don't appreciate the effort here. I do. That is a good amount of work right there.

RF: Probably a good amount of wax, too.

BF: The problem is that it's too much. It's too contrived.

RF: Obviously, if there's a World Beard and Moustache Championship, you're gonna get a lack of holding back. You've got heavy hitters like that guy. There's no time wasted there. Or here:



RF: You better believe that picture is hanging in my locker next to a placard that says, "If you can dream it, you can be it" -- in the same way that I might have a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger up if I was trying to get even with the boys who kick sand in my face at the beach:


Do you think that bicep's ever had a feeling of its own?

RF: And I applaud them. Not just because of the dedication. I applaud those results.

BF: But the vanity it takes to maintain these bad boys is off-putting. Kind of. I mean, I'm definitely not kissing these fellows.

BF: This guy? You betcha:

Ewan McGregor in Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith



RF: He looks like a cat! But a beautiful cat. A beautiful, well-groomed, evenly coated cat.

BF: Ewan McGregor is a first-ballot Husband.

RF: His name is Obi Wan Kenobi. And if you're going to introduce movies, you might want to first think about the fact that Star Wars is real. Not as real as The Lord of the Rings, but still pretty real.


It's more like a rockumentary than a film.

RF: But if you do want to go with a movie, try this:

Matthew McConaughey in Reign of Fire



RF: What a one-two punch that duo packed.

BF: Christian Bale will always have a place in my heart.

RF: I agree. But he does not destroy this movie the way Matthew McConaughey does. Do you see that head? Do you see that beard?


Do you see the beast? See its eyes? Magic hour...

RF: To round out the movie star category, let's have...

Daniel Day-Lewis


There is so much happening here.

BF: What's his wife doing? What are her eyes saying to you?

RF: I am distracted by him. The beard is award-winning, of course, but he is also wearing a loosely-tied pink tie.

BF: It's a woman's scarf, not a tie.

RF: If Daniel Day-Lewis wears it, it becomes a man's tie. That is also, by this logic, a man's beret.

BF: Is that a velvet blazer he's wearing? I can only hope.

RF: It's a man's blazer. And his wife is a man. Everything he touches becomes manly. He's like King Midas, only all of the gold is man-gold.

BF: Let's move on to historically awesome beards.

RF: I'm going to start with a two-parter, a before-and-after, from the halcyon days of our country.

Ulysses S. Grant



RF: That's the "before" picture, when he was a strapping young lad.

BF: I just like the cow-lick at the top of his head.

RF: His chin is made of America. That's the kind of chin that could stop a bullet. I mean that did stop a bullet. The bullet of slavery.

BF: Was the bullet scared to approach that "wide" chest of his? He's mousy-looking.

RF: It holds the heart of America in it, you red-bellied Communist.



RF: That is the "after" picture. It is after he had been drinking for mostly all the years in between the two pictures. He is, in fact, drunk in this picture. (I made up this fact.)

BF: That is a chest I can respect.

RF: It's full of alcohol. And sadness. A lot of it probably related to this sparkling gem of a man:

William F. Sherman



RF: I think we all know what that "F" stands for. He is impossibly hot in most ways.

BF: Those pockmarks make me nervous.

RF: You know who they made nervous? The South. As he burned it. With his gaze. Next up?

Abraham F. Lincoln



RF: Is this too obvious? Everyone knows that he rocked an all-time beard. What most people don't know is that he stood 7'5" tall.

BF: No, he didn't.

RF: I'm sorry that you hate America. Maybe you also hate freedom and those who fought for it. Next up:

Frederick Douglass



BF: I love freedom. Especially people who sing about it.

RF: Touche. In a fight, I think that Douglass would beat Lincoln. It's not the obvious choice, but if you stare deeply into that man's eyes? He is rock solid. With feelings.

BF: Those grim lips are the tell-tale signs.

RF: No, the heart in the floorboards was the tell-tale sign. But if we stick with freedom, we've got two more entries.

Karly Marx



BF: How's the juxtaposition of that mustache and that beard and the back of that head? Can you have a black mustache and a white beard?

RF: "Juxtaposition"? Really? Well, I can make up words, too. How's cabluxtabosition? And you can have dual-colored hair.

BF: But like that? Where it's just black and then just white?

RF: Look, you're missing the point, which is that Karly Marx let small animals -- like birds and cats -- nest in his beard, because he believed in the common man and the workers and rising up.

BF: Like an eagle?

RF: I'm not the Communist here. Now let's get to the heart of the matter:

Malcolm X



BF: Malcolm X, you are an all-time Husband. I would marry you any time, any place.

RF: I concur. Any random video of him is proof.

BF: He's so intelligent and awesome.

RF: The best thing to do is to realize that hotness peaked when he was preaching some feelings. After that, it was downhill.

BF: There was no downhill for Malcolm X.

RF: It was more like he was on an incline, like a roller coaster might provide, only at the top, instead of going down and really quickly, he went up and really quickly. And then exploded.

BF: And then punched everyone in the face.

RF: With an explosion. Focus, though! We have two more folks for this list. These are the top two. The upper tier of beards. Ready?

Santa Claus



RF: KABLAMMO. If you need to see that one close up to appreciate it, here's the link.

BF: There are no words.

RF: She is working a look I can't quite place. I almost have the words to articulate what she's doing, but half of my attention is rooted to Santa. To his random gesticulation.

BF: She's trying to see through the camera and somehow eat your brain.

RF: That's kablammy. Last but not least:

Jesus F. Christ



RF: Got you.

Transcending history and the world, a tale of souls and swords eternally retold.

Only one person who might ever read my garbage contributions to this blog will get that reference.

And it is him:


I never had such an easy victory!

Today at 2:25, with the final bell of the school day still buzzing its insectoid menace in my ears1, I threw my belongings together and sprinted to my car. A few minutes later, I had beaten the buses to the main roads of the town where I teach. Soon enough, I was on the highway, singing along to a random song2.

I had a doctor's appointment at 3:20, you see, and assumed that if I opened the "I could get stuck behind a bus" window even a crack, all of the delinquents in the neighborhood would throw it wide open and clamber in, knapsacks open and ski masks on3. Then the delinquents would ransack my house, or car, leaving me stuck without home owner's insurance, or behind a bus.

So I sailed along. Right up until the state of New York shut down two of the three lanes of traffic on the Interstate. You know the one with all the cars trying to get somewhere on it? That one. And without the extra two lanes, everyone lost their minds.

I watched a man in a BMW repeatedly slam on the gas and then immediately the brakes while menacing4 a school bus. Full of children. He was literally within a few feet of the bumper each time that he hit the brakes, and each time he had to stop so suddenly that his entire body would jerk comically forward. But it's not his fault that he was so angry at this bus for being in his way. How dare it not drive into the car in front? And the next one? Until he could get where he needed to go? He was such a busy guy. So very, very busy. He had zero time to notice that the car he was almost hitting was full of children who would, I think, be upset when he died screaming and immolated in the twisted wreckage of running into the back of a steel machine four times the size of his car.

Anyway, I helped him out by flipping the kids off while yelling out the window5.

1. I have no idea what this means.
2. Or "Before He Cheats" by Whatshername.
3. I am losing this metaphor as we speak.
4. Like an insectoid buzzing!
5. Or singing "Before He Cheats."


Press and turn your signal to the right!

An hour later, I was late to the doctor and feeling blue. The check-up went fine, or it didn't; I forget, but I know that my throat hurts, and I need to have my tonsils removed at age 27. Do you know what that means?

If you want to know what that means, turn to the next post.
If you want to get away from me, click here.
If you want to explore the Cave of Time, turn to page 111.