Month: August 2013

A few years ago I spent some time in Florida. This wasn’t the real Florida, mind you, this was Disney’s Florida. I went with friends, had a ball, and hardly saw any of the madness that so plagues the media outlets today. The real Florida is a place where laws are made for political purpose. A good example of that is the Cuban Adjustment Act. Whereas any other nationality sets foot on American soil as an undocumented immigrant, they may be arrested. Cubans, on the other hand, are allowed to stay and provided a 1 year fast track to citizenship.

This is not the only peculiarity of Florida. The ZImmerman-Martin case highlighted the difficulties of the Stand Your Ground Law, but self-defensive assault has long been a right of the people. A recent case that highlighted this was the case of a bully murdered by the kid who was being bullied by him. I am the last to stand for bullying, but murdering your bully and then avoiding charges is a peculiarity that seems rather unique to the Florida Coast.

Lets not forget about the hanging chads. Before it was a cultural reference for poop that just won’t move on, it was the controlling factor in the 2000 Presidential election that saw supposed Internet Creator, Al Gore lose out to Upside Down Book Reader, George Bush.

In a place with as much swamp land as legitimate real estate, there are bound to be a few peculiarities (and alligators). Perhaps none as egregiously odd as this 2009 gem where a man called in a 911 emergency because the Donut Shop ran out of lemonade. Florida is flat out weird. Now, I live in AZ, so I can do about 17 more columns like this on my state, but like I said, I live here.

And people would talk bad about me.

1. I often wonder what ideas my head would be filled with if I never watched TV. The tube plays a significant role in my life and without it I wonder what my loose thoughts would be filled with?
2. Could be art. I’ve never had the mental time to appreciate art in any large way. I’d love to see and learn more about all forms of art.
3. This isn’t much of a blog this evening–call it the joys of a friday night. My brain is working overtime buzzing through a handful of private and work projects while still trying to get up to half speed. Full speed is perhaps a week off, just in time for classes.
4. Going to miss GenCon yet again. I really wanted to go this year being that it is very much the year of Shadowrun. I have multiple stories and work out there alongside some really great writers and I am proud of that.
5. Spent some of that story money before I got it. I picked up a 46″ TV for almost less than it cost my wife to buy her new glasses online. That’s been our ‘deal’ for years now. SHe makes a capital purchase and then I make one, or vice versa.

Been a long time since I’ve written about the game of football. Though I have a coaches meeting monday night for Soccer, it is the oval pigskin that occupies my thoughts. Do all ex  players wind up wanting to coach in order to stay closer to the game? The league is littered with players turned position coaches. Now that we’re in the Preseason for the NFL I  am anxious to watch the game and learn even more.

Maybe football is my one true hobby. I love it like a fat kid loves cake and I’ll coach it, talk it, and teach it free of charge. Lately I’ve been researching offenses from as far back as the origin of the game, trying to become the student of the game I never was when it truly mattered. This isn’t regret talking, this is my way of eyeballing the future. I want to coach the game beyond these last few years of flag. Maybe I coach my kids or someone else’s in the long run, but developing young players and being a teacher is where I want to be.

Some Thoughts:

1. I deleted MineCraft from my Xbox today after an in-game fight between the three boys erupted into a screaming match and deteriorated violently from there. It was time for that game to go.
2. When you work in education and someone says, hey, research says that students need this! your first thought should be, how can I make this happen for my students as opposed to, how am I going to manipulate this situation to get what I want so I can make my area stronger and get what I am entitled to in order to make my area into the image I believe it ought to be for students… Just saying.
3. I love how Chip Kelly is screwing with the media. NFL Network had to preview Eagles Patriots as Matt Barkley and the Eagles having no idea who is going to be putting in time beyond that guy. They stayed in form announcing the Patriots backup as the guy. It is clear the Patriots #2 is playing that game and not much will be seen of Brady. How about Tebow? I want to see Tebow.

Surfing the company website I noticed a bald white guy who immediately struck me as an old detective. Now the video was an HR video, so I had no reason to suspect Mr. Bald to be a police offer. I wondered why I thought that, and the answer popped into my head immediately. Mr. Bald mirrored my frame of reference for what an aging police detective should look like. I’m not ready to blame The Closer outright. I can’t really explain where this particular frame of reference or even stereotype came from. Some people look like cops, or crooks, or bankers, or housewives, etc.

Dictionary.com defines frame of reference as a structure of concepts, values, customs, views, etc., by means of which an individual or group perceives or evaluates data, communicates ideas, and regulates behavior. By this definition, we take in data from people’s appearance and compare that data to specific sets of criteria we are familiar with and seek the best match. This simplifies our understanding of who new people are as well as new situations. We apply our frame of reference to the situation and act according to expectations about that frame of reference.

So, when I saw the bald dude I felt cop. What are some of your frame of reference-based stereotypes? Think hard about it, because being aware of it will allow you to control your reactions to people, putting you in a better place for communication.

I went back to work today. My heart is in it, though my brain is still scattered by the extended vacation and I remain terribly unprepared to teach. The good news is that I don’t have to teach just yet. Even better news is that I have the mental and organizational tools to put everything together before the semester begins. The problem with collaborative work isn’t that we all need to be on the same page, it is that we all need to be in the same library. We all are supposed to be pushing towards this common goal, which in education is somewhat undefined. Sure, we are all supposed to be there to help students succeed, but the way we define success and what we feel needs to be done to propel students forward varies tremendously.

I approach teaching from a somewhat selfish standpoint. I want to have fun and enjoy coming to work every day, so I create a learning environment that compels people to be a part of it and to enjoy the process—be it of writing, learning sociology, whatever. It is my goal for students to learn something more than content. I want them to learn how to enjoy the act of learning.

After all, if you like something you keep on doing it.

1. People each have different motivations and some are very myopic in their pursuit of their own motivations. This is a problem when you cannot provide what motivates them, but must find common ground in order to be effective in your role. I encountered this problem in the past and was unable to make it work. Now that I’m dealing with it again, I feel that I’ve matured to the point where I know when to speak and when to shut up and listen. It doesn’t solve the problem even a little, but my silence keeps the problem from getting worse.
2. At some point the kids all dressing in a particular fashion, be it the kids with the baseball caps with flat brims or what have you, must realize that they are not being individuals. In truth, they are aligning themselves as part of a specific subculture, which is neither small nor defining. All the look says is where you shop and what you think the collective idea cool is supposed to look like. By dressing the way we dress, by following talismans all we are doing is strengthening the predictive models. We are responding to programming from some more dominant ideology and allowing a merchant entity to capitalize on that and often predict through mathematical models what we are going to do, want, or like next.
3. Chick Fil A tastes wonderful. My stomach is going to swell like a dead thing in the sun. So much for dieting…

I said sometime last year (or before) that if you do something long enough you become known for it. I have been an average to below average teacher for about four years now. I feel like the teaching version of A-Rod: getting a good paycheck and sucking. It is worse when I visit other teachers and watch how they explode into the classroom with such a wealth of knowledge and determination that I practically feel inadequate sharing space with them. I suppose the same applies to some of my writing. I recently finished working on an anthology with some top shelf authors and I feel like my writing, though decent, wasn’t the best in the book. It should’ve been. Everything we do as individuals should be better than the last thing we did, because once we peak it is only downhill from there.

Diagnosing the problem is tough, but I can look to a series of factors that I’ve gone over ad nauseum on this blog. Kids, Time (see kids), Motivation. Like the good Bob says, “Accept the things you cannot change and have the courage to change the things you can.” I’ve worked out a lot about time management through this blog, spending almost a year of writing dancing around that issue. Now motivation can be summed up more easily: You need to find it in yourself to want to make the effort to be the best and turn on that switch that says ‘One Step Further’. We all have the switch, though it is usually buried deep within that hoarders lair we call a mindscape. I can see it within me, sometimes just out of reach. The key is putting the effort into self efficacy so that you can navigate the crowded caverns of your own psyche to find and finally flip that dang switch.

I’m still working on it, I suppose. But I am getting closer.

Some Thoughts:

1. I joined the modding culture of Xbox 360, albeit briefly. I wanted to create a mod guy that would allow me to level up other players, thus skipping the tough “learn to play and earn your stripes” grind that I should be teaching my kids, but am not. There is a balance of sorts there. I modded up to the point where the other characters I legitimately earned up are, so we have the opportunity to switch characters and I can play that fill-in role where needed. In other words, I am making poor excuses for being a cheater at video games. 

I believe in ghosts. There have been too many experiences in my life for me to remain a disbeliever. However, I cannot understand at this point why anyone would believe without seeing due to the absolutely terrible attempts at falsification of paranormal evidence. I’m not talking about the low-budget YouTube stuff. I’m talking about the financed and televised hoaxes peppering A&E and SyFy. The stuff coming out these days is terrible. It is so bad that I feel insulted as a viewer.

The A&E show that has me so disgusted is a poopfest called American Haunting. The show feels like a seven year old watched Paranormal Activity, showed it to her producer parents who said, “yeah, let’s go with that.” The show attempts to persuade you that the family of the episode is being haunted and cameras are stations around the house for 11 days to catch evidence. What you end up with is a terribly and amateurishly staged hoax that doesn’t even attempt to look real. This show may single handedly remove any few believers in the idea of the paranormal.

If you want to make a disbeliever feed them a steady diet of hoaxes to the point where they’ve been so moved to disbelief that a ghost must actually slap them in the face for them to believe a ghost is real.

As I write this I am coming down from a 24 hr caffeine high. I was on the road for 12 hrs a day doing nothign but driving, scribbling notes, and listening to audio books–all of this in a caffeinated haze with no food. There were niblets, ofc rouse, but nothing thart would constitue a meal. Food isn’t the issue. This is a blog about the value of spednign time by yourself.

I spent the day on the road. 12+ hours of driving through the midwest trying to reach home. I left around 9 AM and finally pulled in for the night at 11 at a Motel 6 that, even by the standards of the workers, was ridiculously crowded. My first job was to settle in and relax. I flipped through HBO to Picasso Baby, Jay-Z’s strange attempt to merge rap with modern performance art. It felt pretentious–especially when he connected with a woman who I recognized as an actual performance artist. I later learned there were several artists and actors and art dealers and rappers and musicians in attendance who all seemed to feel that this moment he created had intense meaning. I suppose these learned individuals would be better judges than I in the general sense, but to ask me as an individual, this was cool and exciting, but it did not take rap to any higher level of art form–no matter if Wale and Fab 5 Freddy are there to bridge the history and culture of the medium or not.

I took off my Jawbone Up to take a shower and settled it into the charger. What I didn’t do was take it with me when I left for the airport. Now a feel like a man who just left his kid at the mall. In what felt like a week the Up became an integral part of my daily routine. I came to rely on the on the familiar buzz of inactivity every 15 minutes I sat idle. I’d even grown to believe the buzz could be of service to me on this roadtrip, prodding me to stay awake as day passed into night and the hours of mid-America highway travel grew tedious. No such luck it seems. We grow to rely on these things we carry. As one author once wrote, they come to define us, creating meaning, symbolism, even separation in our lives.