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I’m gonna talk football. Digital football to be specific. According to UPS my copy of Madden 17 just left Kansas and is due to arrive by 8/24 end of day. The game comes courtesy of some scut work I did for a textbook provider I don’t actually use in the classroom. That is the beauty of such things: I can be real honest about the product I’m not beholden to.

I’m beholden to madden in a certain sense, because it is the only product on the market. That is likely why I was not honest about the level of utter suck last year. It was so bad that I failed to complete a ten year franchise and basically went back to the PS3 version of madden 25. At least the ads were good. They’ve gotten even  better:

The game looks better and appears to hold more promise for all modes of value to me. I may even try to do the game as a player. Couldn’t be better than the 2k modality but who knows how good it could be? The largest change is the joy my youngest gets out of the game, with him now being a QB/RB and wearing my one time #14. I’m a bit stoked to share the new game with him but more stoked to play it myself on those late thursday evenings when the game is on on screen and the video game is on another. #firstworldglee

Some Thoughts:

1. All this really means is that there is a madden 10 minute review on the way and it ought to be a doozy.
2. School is also on the way. Monday. Holy crap I’m not ready to meet 150 new students and be responsible for their academic success… I need another drink.

A few weeks ago I fixed my shower.

In the greater scheme of things this is not a big deal; the expected chores of masculinity. However, in my life it represented a tectonic shift back towards an understanding that I can in fact handle my business. My pride took a hit a few years back at the hands of a rough divorce and resultant financial downfall. Several other social situations conspired to feed into my near depressive state and drive my self confidence to record lows. It was noticeable. The teaching suffered. The writing dried up. The home life went to crap. The love life wobbled on the brink of oblivion, curling back and forth over the edge like a drunk ballerina.

I didn’t have any real wins. Then I fixed the shower. Like I said, not momentous, but for me it was a moment of revelation. I realized that if I worked hard enough I could actually achieve all that stuff I spent time acting like I could easily accomplish. Turns out its real, mostly. I can achieve whatever I set my heart to (within reason) but it takes a lot of hard work that I don’t always want to do. It is also a lot more than the typical writerly Butt-in-Chair philosophy. It takes the mindset and mental peace to use that time effectively. I’m learning.

Some Thoughts:

1. Got the kids to school in time to play in the yard before class. Also not a big deal, but it means we are back on track here at the TalisHouse. Maybe that means these blogs start tipping back up towards 500 words?
2. And then I noticed it wasn’t Tuesday but Wednesday… so that happened.

 

The boys asked me for a theme night. They’ve fallen into such things lately. They’ve been exposed to Harry Potter night (complete with a homegrown tri-wizard tourney) and Dragon Ball Z night (with an outdoor movie-style projection and associated gameplay). Now they feel the Need for Speed.

Race car night is set to happen this Saturday, the day before the older two take the court in Suns Arena for their final basketball game of the season and one week before the AYF Tackle Football season gets underway. In sum, this is our last gasp of a summer vacation-esque weekend. The festivities will include a first look at the Rocket League racing/automobile-soccer game and an epic hot wheels racing extravaganza throughout the house.

Now all I gotta figure out is what to feed them. I mean, what do racers eat? They never actually make a big deal of such things on screen unless you’re counting Ricky Bobby…

Some Thoughts:

1. I have been in programming hell for a few days now. It started with the effort to get the blog back to posting to facebook (not easy) after a brief flirtation with cancelling facebook. Seriously, reactivating after deactivating facebook is harder and more cumbersome than getting a new credit card number after a hack. Of course, nobody knew I was gone, so there’s that.
2. Then I tried to update another site I run and that whole thing collapsed and shattered in dramatic fashion. 40 bucks later I’m still picking up the digital debris.
3. On a positive note, this one ought to publish to the book of many faces. Let me know if it did, okay?

Entering the first week of my schools ‘pre-season’ I’m clearly rusty. I haven’t gotten the syllabi or content to where it ought to be at this time and I need to move it in that direction quickly in order to have the time to relax and reflect on the upcoming 17 weeks.

I’m not talking about sports here; not in the traditional sense. This is more about the way I try to hype up for what is essentially a mindsucking experience. I have to be ready to deal with the complaints and degradation and overall nonsense associated with student learning. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about. Today I had a student begin the process of filing a grievance against me, because I failed to grade an assignment she resubmitted. Two things here: 1. I let her resubmit the assignment though I clearly state in the syllabus how assignments ought to be submitted (she did it wrong) and late work will not be accepted. So, I was a nice guy and got screwed for it. 2. She earned an A in the class and still is pissed about the one assignment. Now add in a diverse group of students ranging from those with mental disabilities to near genius intellect and you get my average day.

For those who think teaching is easy work that anyone can do, I say try it. For those who think teachers don’t work hard or have a cushy job, I say try it. I admit we get a lot of time off but the time on is really about being on–like on stage–for a legitimate period of time every day. The time off the clock is still about grading and handling other responsibilities of a residential faculty outside of your limited office hours.

I’ll climb off my high horse. Yeah, it looks easy the way the good ones present it because we make it look that way. In other words, we put in the hard work when you aren’t looking and calling us lazy.

 

I spent some time today listening to Angela Maiers ted talk on people mattering to each other. Maiers reminds her audience that it is a simple step to remind people that they matter, but it is something that few of us bother to do. Why? Because often few of us realize or even reflect on our own mattering. I have some objections or reframing to those arguments. I believe most of us feel like we matter to someone. I feel like we don’t entirely recognize how or even that we matter beyond that tiny circle we define as either our family or our close acquaintances.

This blog is proof that I want to matter to someone outside of the handful of people who still love me. I write for ten minutes every day but I don’t have to publicize it. Today I reactivated the facebook stream that reminds people who are my facebook friends that I’ve said something. I did so because it is important to me that I matter in some sense. I am a writer and I don’t think you can be a writer–published or otherwise–and not want to matter to someone outside of yourself or small circle of friends.

Knowing that it is important that we know we matter is going to be a fundamental tenet of my class this semester, because I have noticed that people believe they matter especially less during voting season. I hope to change that philosophy for them and for these students to go out and change that philosophy for someone else.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to build a Juggs machine. I’ve been trying to figure out a lot of things lately. I feel like the people who know how to build stuff are better off financially and perhaps feel happier and more accomplished. Do-it-yourself is the pre-maker’s movement. Learning how to do things you’ve never done before shows the elasticity of the brain and keeps you feeling relatively young. The key here is relative.

Some Thoughts:

1. First scrimmage of this young tackle football season. Our starters are ready but our newer players are not close. This is worse on the tiny mite team where the lack of talent is really glaring. I wish I knew how to help with that one.

11.11: I woke last night around 2 AM, barely thirty minutes after I originally went to sleep. My youngest was standing in my doorway, wanting to crawl into bed and into the comfort of family and safe, warm, space. Something about the moment terrified me. It wasn’t so much the surprise of him standing there as it was a memory of my own youth and the terror that evening often brought. I was-am-afraid of dying. It isn’t the part after you are dead but the moment itself when you see yourself slipping away, as if someone opened a giant trap door into your life and everything below you is blackness.

What scares me most of all is the recognition of no longer being me–no longer having a sense of this life, loves, family. They will continue on in my absence and, in time, think of me only as a distant memory. I will not be able to see them grow old and love and find family and happiness. I mean, I know little about the hour of my death and could live to 100, but the idea of dying itself is terrifying.

I don’t think it is something you get over. You shelve it, pushing it deep into your sub conscious in the places it cannot be reached until that memory of fear is torn free to envelop you.

Some Thoughts:

1. Being this morbid is awful. This, along with the occasional lack of motor control and hallucinations are the hallmarks of a lack of sleep.
2. Dog has completely given up on peeing outdoors. Not good…

 

I’ve come to the conclusion that reality is fairly irrelevant. I didn’t think so at first, but the more I see what is happening around me the more I recognize the statement to be utterly true. From Trump’s fallacious ‘people are saying’ to the short-sightedness of people drawn to true/false based answers, the reality I deal with every day allows room for vast interpretation. Trevor Noah took a stab at this recently, comparing Trump to ‘the dress’ meme people couldn’t get away from. Is it gold? is it black? Well, reality is nuanced. We elected Obama under the understanding he would pull all troops out of Iraq and let them deal with their own shit. He did so and ISIS formed. Now we are blaming the man for ISIS and the “growing threat to US security” which is largely false.

No, Mr. Trump, Obama did not found ISIS. What he did do was respond to the desires and will of the American people–a will that shifted into ‘why did you leave?!” mode once we got out and shit got real. In other words, he did what is about to happen with the Brexit. I bet they’ll blame that one on David Cameron. I bet he quit to dodge that exact bullet.

Welcome to the 2016-17 football season. I have officially done nothing to prepare for the upcoming fantasy season. I haven’t watched football players above the age of 11 in quite some time and let me tell you the complexity of NFL (even college) offenses is getting me pumped. I coach in a youth tackle league and see a whole lot of wing offenses ranging from the traditional T to doubles to Wing/Pistol hybrids. All of it is designed to get a speedy little dude out in space and doing work. Now that has my juices flowing for the pro game because there are more options available to offensive coordinators and more opportunity for mismatches and–in the preseason especially–for a young nobody to pop off and score three TDs. Watch this season for a handful of dudes you never heard of or straight forgot about to make an impact. This is especially true because of the number of suspensions and injuries ravaging the sport. Even Brady is in the pen for 4 weeks.

So, what do I have by way of predictions? I’ll start with my beloved Jets. They picked up yet another 2-back near the end of his prime. This one is as versatile as the ersatz Ladianian Tomlinson or moreso. Now while many thought this LT would be a shell of his former self, being so close to the end of career, he turned out to be not ersatz at all, but a legit #1 option for the Jets. This trend will continue and the Bears will be crying into the loss column, pissed they screwed things up so badly.

The Giants don’t have a definable run game. They do have a legit second option in the pass attack and barring another recovery setback, a third as well. Expect Macadoo to open up the passing game in vintage Manning style and work the ball downfield as a way to clean up the edges and free up running room for whoever totes the rock.

That’s it for the opening edition of 2016-17. More to come in a week.

This post doubles as an argument to my ENG 102 research writing students. On the first day–week even–I like to acclimate them to the classroom setting and to the idea of what we are trying to achieve here. I don’t teach them how to research in the traditional sense. Most of them operate google the way a landscaper operates a mower. They have that blunt force knowledge of how to get the information that they want. I want to turn them into precision instruments that know how to shape that data into something convincing.

Research writing is argument writing. Everything is about trying to convince the reader to listen to and understand your point of view. Even the more ‘exploratory’ writing meets this claim. Exploration of ideas in a paper is about you telling me what you learned and supporting that learning through carefully crafted statements about how this thing can mean what you say it means. So, what then am I teaching? How to insert that research into a context. How to create context and manipulate it to meet your ends. The research is the icing on this cake of convincing that you as a writer are doing. For example, Mark Bowden wanted people to see the Pablo Escobar assassination in a particular light, so he wrote Killing Pablo. We will read that book and dissect the argument and evidence chapter by chapter to uncover how he created the perception that he did.

later the students will learn to model those strategies and apply them to their own writing. Oh what fun!

Some Thoughts:

1. Football is coming…
2. Trump is suggesting that someone take Clinton (known to the Secret Service as Evergreen) out. He called on his second amendment people to handle it. Then he later suggested that he did no such thing. How he continues to behave like the shitty college kid who does something wrong and knows you cannot prove it continues to baffle me.
3. Trump’s Secret Service nickname is Mogul. His wife is Muse. In contrast Obama is Renegade and the first lady is Renaissance. Mrs. Clinton is Evergreen and President Clinton is Eagle. There’s a joke in there if you look closely.