http://www.mccsc.edu/~personnel/
posted by geoff on 8/23/2003 11:24:17 PM
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http://www.mccsc.edu/~personnel/01-Sub_Teacher_Requirements.htm
posted by geoff on 8/23/2003 11:17:04 PM
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posted by geoff on 8/20/2003 01:13:01 PM
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i love riding my bike in columbus, either early in the morning, or late at night - any time that there's no traffic because i can lazilly cruise in the middle of the lane and look around at the city instead of constantly looking over my shoulder wondering whether the dude in the truck is going to yell something at me or whether the car next to me is going to open it's door. columbus, despite being flat, and easy to navigate, is pretty crappy for riding bikes mostly because there aren't any bike lanes and motorists still haven't gotten used to the idea of people actually riding their bikes in the street. but, on a sunday morning with no one around, it's great.
i cruised down high street and thought of nicking a pastry from the delivery left out in front of the coffee shop, but the packages were so neatly wrapped in protection from the night's rain that i didn't want to disturb them. i went further south and lamented that there wasn't any equivalent to the diner in buffallo that had the .99 breakfast. i passed nancy's, a diner that was open, and that i've never been to, mainly because it's still the real deal and thus pretty inhospitable to vegitarians, but i'm glad it's thee i guess - it at least makes this part of town feel more like people actually live there instead of being a "destination" like campus.
i cut west, out past the strip malls and into the corn fields nestled between odd shaped, ugly, institutional looking buildings that belong to the university. at an intersection, my roommate, driving to her early morning job gardening at a golf course waved at me as she drove straight through a red light.
posted by geoff on 8/19/2003 01:50:17 PM
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I WENT TO A PARTY LAST NIGHT ...
i never really listened to jawbreaker when i was younger. the punk music that i was exposed to was less cerebral, less adult and more aggressive and adolescent. jawbreaker was a band i started listening to when i was bored, curious, and had access to napster at college and kept listening to because the people i lived with at the sweet life, and will in particular, loved it. there are so many good jawbreaker songs, and there are songs that can be appreciated for themselves and not necessarily for their personal relevance, but i think pretty much everyone has favorite jawbreaker songs that resonate personally with them. one song for me is "bad scene everybody's fault" just because i think that's what parties and relationships really are like and it's always nice to see one's perception validated in song.
it was called a hags and dandies party and from what i gathered it was ana and connie's concoction. the hag part of the party comes from the fact that the party was going to be at a house that i dubbed the "hag collective" and whose name sort of stuck. the whole hag thing started when ryan made fun of jen for hanging out with some of the older ladies from her job. "i bet she's a hag," ryan said, and he was probably right. hell, jen's really a hag when it comes down to it with her job in human resources, her dog birthday parties, and interest in furniture. the joke just kept growing and growing and a lot of girls in town sort of adopted the hag mantle for the fun of it. they would sit and gossip or dig up ridiculous outfits like gold trimmed puffy nylon windsuits. so it's not surprising that there was a hag themed party. i have no idea where the dandies part of the party theme came from but i'll guess that ana thinks that boys all dolled up is kind of funny. at least it wasn't "pimps and hos", a horrifying party theme that seems pretty common in columbus and i'm sure in college towns nationwide. i don't think most people really got the dandie part anyway. most boys just came in dresses. i ended up wearing a slinky black skirt with a delicate black tank top. it was frighteningly comfortable.
so the party had most of the elements in the jawbreaker song. let's start with makeout sessions. as i was leaving the party, i noticed two separate pairs of my friends happily rolling on the floor and kissing sloppily. there was a spin the bottle game at one point. the next day i heard of various awkward encounters in various bedrooms of the house. the sexual tension was so thick you could f it. really though, it wasn't innocent, but it also wasn't all that creepy. it seemed like the crazy sexual energy that only the onset of summer can bring where people are just drunk enough, or just comfortable enough, or just tired enough of holding in their feelings that it just erupts into a flurry of sloppy kisses awkward fondling and confused words uttered in dark bedrooms. i feel like this week people will either be elated or terrified, but i think that as long as people don't freak out, it will be a good thing for most.
there were also bicycle messengers, well at least former ones, or bicycle shop employees, or assorted bike punks, but the big surprise was when a bunch of kids rolled up to the party on bikes laden with mysterious bundles and packs. it turned out that these kids were the "flying rhudabega cycle circus", a group of kids who were traveling from st. louis to philadelphia singing, dancing, performing skits and puppet shows to spread the word about the dangers of car culture and genetically modified foods and the biotech industry. that night, costumes and instruments were removed from the bike packs and they put on a quick show of some of their routines. it was a lot of fun and gave the party a bizarre little kick that made it something that was exciting and interesting to me and not something that i wanted to leave right away. the circus put on a performance the next day on the osu campus which i took my parents to and it was a lot of fun.
there were punks at the party, or at least the punks who weren't at the show at the legion or the strike anywhere show at bernies, but really at a party the punks behave mostly like any other type of kids at a college party. after the bike kids finished performing, will convinced the rest of us to grab our instruments out of the van and play a few songs. it was kind of bad because it's hard to play when other people are drunk. it used to drive me nuts because i thought i was the one fucking up, but now i realize it's a team effort. it was a lot of fun though. we had been playing songs acoustic for friends a lot lately and i really like doing it. i guess i'm always worried that people will get sick of it, or maybe that i like the attention too much, but it's nice to hear people singing together and the songs are kind of about all of us, so it always seems nice and special even if they are just songs.
finally, i did see my ex-girlfriend at the party though she wasn't "totally kissing this guy". it was good to see her. somehow we had recently entered a period in our relationship where we could finally talk with each other casually and naturally. we hadn't been talking for the longest time until she sent me a message on the computer congratulating me about my graduation and saying that she had a gift to give me. our not-talking thing was kind of stupid and not really the result of any ground-shattering fallout. things were actually pretty good right after we broke up, but as we grew apart and replaced the segment of our lives that had been our relationship with other things, there became fewer and fewer reasons to hang out as just friends. it wasn't so much that i didn't want to hang out, there were just so many things that i would rather do, and when we didn't hang out, it meant there wasn't really anything serious to talk about when we did talk or see each other. it just didn't seem worth it, despite the fact that our relationship had been long, intense, and by all accounts really great. the fact that i could so easily be content with the past being the past and the present being the present upset her, i think. and i just couldn't make a convincing argument that the fact that i didn't want to hang out now, didn't mean i had in any way devalued the past. things just changed. it became that every conversation we would have would eventually degrade into an argument about why i never called or stopped by. it's true that neither of those acts took much effort, but part of me probably just didn't feel like it and a bigger part certainly didn't feel like it after someone yelled at me for not doing it. maybe that's stupid stubbornness, but i do genuinely think that one's relationships with people have to be dictated by the present and not the past. but the point is, i think everything's worked out. when she left the party i walked the block back to her place so she could give me the graduation present - an edward goury picture book about the abcs and the demise of small children - that she had bought when we were still dating and had forgotten to give me. it was nice and thoughtful and i like it. we sat and talked for a while and it was a little awkward because i found it so easy to slip from our estrangement to having a conversation about real things, the kind of conversation that i had with people who are now a big part of my life, and it was nice. it was just nice to talk with someone about something other than school or the normal social catching up. throughout the conversation i detected a hint of sadness from her, but i don't really think i can make any accurate explanation. when i left to go back to the party, we made plans to hang out, maybe to have a vegan potluck. i don't know if that will happen, but at least now i feel that it could happen and that's better than a month ago.
so i was wearing a dress the whole night at the party, as were most of the boys, and seriously, not to be conceited, but we looked good. the next morning will recounted an anecdote where some dudeish neighbor came to the party and asked him, "so are you all fags or what?" later, as the dude was leaving the party, he approached will and said, "i know this is fucked up, but do you think you could kiss me." will declined. becca and i left the party and walked back to her apartment together with both of us still wearing our party dresses. i got a bunch of whistles and propositions, but nothing too aggressive. i was amazed. i though, "i'm going to make it all the way home without being accosted." we made it to the yauh's parking lot when we came upon a group of bro-dogs crowded around an suv. i don't remember the line exactly, but it was something like, "get a life ... fag ... suck a cock in five minutes". the more shocking thing was when another in the party offered, "i'll stick my cock in your ass", which seemed a little odd given that he seemed so averse to anything that in any way challenged his rigid notion of gender roles. despite the violent undertones, i guess it gives some credence to the whole homophobes are driven by latent homoerotic desires theory. i started to try to make some articulate like unthreatening response, but the words didn't come. i still fantasize that one time i'll make a comment so clever, so intelligent, that it will appeal to the basic reason of the dudes and they'll wake as if from a daze and say, "you know, it's no big deal if a dude doesn't act or look like me, or wears a dress sometimes,and i guess it's not a big deal if a dude fucks a dude either." but that will probably never happen and it sure didn't that night. they just walked away across the parking lot shouting a few more threats and we kept walking back to the apartment. i was left feeling a little as if i had somehow lost the showdown, but for the first time that feeling was brief and unimportant.
ONE WORD FOR ANOTHER
i don't know if it should be frightening or endearing when you find yourself and another both saying one word but meaning another; if it means that you are both engaged in a quixotic struggle for something impossible but amazing or if you are both trying to escape, as if an escape through language could really do anything, a certain reality that could be anything from unpleasant to devastating.
RELATIVELY SPEAKING
i'm writing this as i sit in a room decorated in #24 jeff gordan memorabilia including a banner on the wall, bobble heads, a desk lamp, and various matchbox cards. my cousin, who is now 8 and who i last saw as an infant was kind enough to give up his room to me when my mom, dad, and i stopped by my dad's relatives on our way north to camp in michigan. i threw hundreds of balls to andrew who can't seem to get enough of hitting baseballs or playing catch which is really good because, one, kids are sweet, and two, it allows me to tactfully escape the adult power struggles, standoffishness, and otherwise completely confusing dynamics that i will never, and have no desire to ever understand. it used to bother me as a child because i fealt like i somehow had some part to play in terms of diffusing awkward situations, but now i just sit back and watch the show as my father interacts with his sisters and mothers. i wonder if this is how tim and i will interact, though i sure hope not. in some ways it's fascinating - the family relations being a broad, colorful, and complicated tangle and hearing stories of people i've never met or never seen. to document the family's 5 or so generations from immigrating from china to the present would be an amazing story, i'm sure. it just brings out the worst in my father, and i really don't care for that.
WHEN YOU ARE 10
or maybe 12 or perhaps 14, you become increasingly annoyed with your parents for still treating you like a kid. when you're 20 or so, you realize that it's not that your parents were still treating you like a kid, aside of course from the normal parental anxieties about substance abuse or staying out late or jumping off bridges which are either confirmed or they outgrow, but that they were treating you the only way they could treat you, and that they will most likely continue to treat you as long as you know them. even when you are 10 or 12 or 14, it is not so much the manner in which you related to your parents that was disconcerting but the recognition that even though you were still quite malleable, your parents were not and, most likely, your mannerisms, your values, your idiosyncrasies, would be come just as indelible.
IN READING CLASS AS A CHILD
i was taught many generally useless rules and guidelines about reading. one rule which i was not taught, but which might have been useful, would have been "beware of books which contain paragraphs starting with the phrase 'in casting a swiftian eye on our modern leputa...'" such a rule might go on to suggests that books containing such a passage may be prone towards long-windedness, discursiveness, or general ridiculousness and should be read with caution or perhaps avoided altogether. had this passage occurred in the first chapter of robert anton wilson's "the new inquisition", rather than a few chapters in, i might have heeded this advice and not finished the book, but since it had been lent to me by my friend ryan, and it was one of his favorite books, and there is little i like to do more than argue with ryan, i thought i should read the entire book lest we get into another bout of the infamous tom robbins debate of summer tour.
i think that this book is poorly written, lacks any kind of editing or apparent outside revue, and is intellectually masturbatory. nonetheless, i think that the fundamental idea expressed in the book is not only valid but really important. so, i'll spare you the time of wading through this book and just say that i agree with wilson completely in his main point: scientific and philosophical agnosticism is a good thing because it not only allows researchers and thinkers to think around the prevailing paradigms of their age and come up with some of the most important scientific discoveries and inventions, but also prevents the policy makers or average citizens from falling into the kind of fundamentalism and territoriality that wilson suggests fuels the military industrial complex and is the source of many of our great social conflicts.
so this is a good point, although it's a simple one. the reason it's so significant, is, as wilson points out early on, because it is so difficult for we, as humans to maintain such an agnosticism, or even liberalism. ultimately, however, these very good and important points could be made in a 20 page essay. the fact that the chapters beyond the first are somewhat ill-conceived and hastily written is underscored by the fact that this book is one of the most poorly edited volumes that i have read in a long while, ripe with typos and awkward grammatical constructs. now i know that grammar, spelling, and editing, are not necessarily hallmarks of quality, they generally get themselves worked out quite a bit when an author re-reads a text to make sure his or her ideas are expressed as potently as possible or passes the text to coleauges for review. in general, i think that self review and collaborative review makes things better and this book would have benefitted from both. the remainder of the book beyond it's central thesis is filled primarily with two things - wilson name dropping philosophers that he's read and physicists with whom he's conversed personally and wilson citing examples of alleged paranormal phenomenon to, if i understand correctly, make the point that our prevailing view of science may be somewhat limited. as for the name dropping, i don't think that the additional ideas of information do much to augment wilson's thesis, and i suspect, as i haven't actually read many of the texts that he cites, that the quoting of a few lines of theses texts thereby decontextualizing those ideas does a disservice to the authors. as for the inclusion of the references to paranormal activity, i think that they expose the prejudices and perhaps eccentricities of the author and do little to make his point. he succeeds very early on in supporting his point about the bias of what he calls "The Citadel" of the scientific community by giving anecdotes about how esteemed members of the "legitimate" scientific community ignored or rudely dismissed discoveries or inventions which we now wholeheartedly accept as scientific fact. therefore, the mention of the ufos, bizarre creatures, and strange meteorological occurrences are really unnecessarily. i suppose that they do bring in to question the prevailing perception of the natural world, and i don't think that people who pursue their studies should illicit a threatened and almost fascist response from the scientific community, but in general, i don't really care much about them.
but those criticisms are really criticisms of execution more than concept. the only objection that i i have with wilson's ideas is that though i don't think wilson actually says this, and he may even warn against it, this book could be used to fuel those who hold the notion that agnosticism, in and of itself, is productive. for me, i think agnosticism is a good way to check one's general activities, but that extreme agnosticism is just as much a barrier to "progress" or doing stuff as fundamentalism. the extreme agnostic questions everything to the extent that they come to the conclusion that since nothing is certain or perhaps a better idea than something else, then one shouldn't do anything or lend one's attention or support to anything. everything that has ever meant anything to me has certainly not been a result of such a mindset, nor has it really been a result of a "leap of faith" per se, but it has been a result of someone, at least temporarily, deciding that a particular idea or perception is worth pursuing wholeheartedly. it is only when such commitment turns to dogmatism and people refuse to self-evaluate or accept outside evaluation of their endeavors that good ideas become fundamentalism. i think that extreme agnosticism is often a crutch that the disillusioned use to perpetuate the idea that they are still doing something meaningful and valuable without taking the risk of failure or finding out that the things to which they dedicated a great deal of time or energy were in some part wrong. i've been guilty of this mindset, certainly, but i don't think it did me or the rest of the world any measure of good.
MY MOM
said that walking on the beach in her bare feet is one of her favorite things to do. i never really understood such statements and they used to annoy me because i thought they were kind of simple, or maybe childish, and i attributed it, in part, to the fact that my mother had spent a great deal of her adult life teaching young children. what i've realized from spending the last few days walking around the outdoors with my mother is that perhaps it is not the teaching that makes her think a certain way, but her perceptions that makes her an exceptional teacher. that she has always possessed a fascination with the world, as it is, and not it's possibilities or implications, that we often abandon with childhood. we walked in the woods and she was constantly amazed that each wildflower could exist and be so beautiful or that the waves on the lake could be so turbulent or placid or the sands so rocky or soft. she was interested in why a marsh is a marsh, or why the lake behaved the way it did, or the birds lived as they lived where i, in a certain cynicism, or boredom, or perhaps just me-ness accepted that those things were just as they were and that there was probably some good explanation for them being that way and that it may be interesting to know why or how they were that way but since we weren't accompanied by an expert in that field to explain, i didn't much care.
and it's not as if i disagree that the world is not as beautiful, or fascinating, or significant as my mother believes. it's just that i don't have the same profound reaction to this that my mother does. i guess one might argue that my life has just become too complicated or confused to appreciate these things, and maybe that's true, but i think that maybe we're just different. the things that move my mom are things that i just accept as existing. the important thing is to appreciate that my mom is capable of having such a profound reaction to or relationship with anything and that some people are so cut off from not just the natural world, but from everything that they never get to feel deeply about anything. "i just want to put it all in my head and keep it forever," she said as we stared out across the beach, our gaze disappearing over the gentle blue green waves and the cloudy horizon.
ONE OF THE THINGS THAT ANNOYS ME THE MOST ABOUT MY FATHER
is that he will try to propose things that he wants to do as if they were things that other people wants to do and that he is actually being quite altruistic in proposing such activities. this is particularly infuriating when you are the alleged benefactor of the proposition.
ONE OF THE THINGS THAT ANNOYS ME MOST ABOUT MY MOTHER
is that she holds a great deal of faith and value in the traditional family unit to the point that she gets a little upset when the unit doesn't quite work out or when others don't care as much about her notion of "family" as her. i think that people are complicated and their relationships even more so and can't really be dictated by something as arbitrary as the family that you are born into. i do think that most everyone has things about them which are good and valuable, and though the breadth and opportunity for having a relationship built around these things can be quite limited, this must be the basis for any kind of interaction and not some preestablished notion of "family" and actions dictated by some kind of obligation.
THE HORRIBLE DOUBLE STANDARD
that my brother and i must face with our father is that our achievements are either jealousy inducing or fear inducing. when we do things that our father agrees with, it seems that he gets angry because we are more capable to do them than he, or don't value them as he would, or don't pursue them to the extent that he would. when we do things that my father doesn't particularly care for, he reacts strongly because he's not a risk taker (in fact he's conservative, at least with his life choices in the worst way possible) and i think that he perceives the choices as being far more perilous than they actually are. so we're damned with whichever choices we make. the only option really, is to find humor in this.
I'LL GRANT MIKEAL THIS
michigan, at least the part on the edge of lake huron IS attractive. i don't know if the same is the case for mikeal's beloved kalamazoo* but in any case, michigan's attractiveness isn't going to sway me away from moving to bloomington which i'm very excited about.
* some background: before leaving columbus, mikeal lobbied hard for kids to move to kalamazoo and start a punk house and really a punk community there. to do something all are own and do it in a way that was right in the sense of how we treated each other and the people around us. it's a nice idea, but it just wasn't as appealing to me as a move to bloomington.
BACK IN FLINT
and there is the akwardness of familial relations long since fallen into atrophy. it is as if i'm not there as i sit and hear gossip of people i have never known. listening to gossip which is completely foreign to you is a bit disconcerting because it lets you examine this sort of communication objectively and lets you have a glimpse at how you might behave when engaged in similar conversations. it's not flattering.
in many ways, my father's family, despite the idiosyncracies that could either be attributed to ethnicity or to simple eccentricity, is the more typically american of my two extended familiies. they seem motivated by what motivates most people - success, status, financial security, and to a large degree they've achieved it. my mother's family, on the other hand, for better or for worse seems to have been driven more by circumstance or passion. in any case, between the akward maneuvering between my father and grandmother i hear pieaces of a story of a family that has spread out over the country. of transplanted texans, of californians, of family businesses and of success and failure. i can't say i really feel connected to it but it is intriguing and exciting. the idea that we are each part of something bigger and more complicated than our own lives, the result of countless connections and circumstances. you can estrange yourself from your family, but it's hard to escape the notion of family and the complicated bramble of relationships that we somehow sow.
LIGHTHOUSES
when i was visiting my friends matt and erin in michigan i stayed at their house and was sitting in the kitchen where i found a picture of matt, erin, and their mother on a family vacation posed in front of a lighthouse. the picture is great mainly because erin, in eighth grade at the time and by her account not liking her family very much, looks absolutely miserable. suddenly, i feel like i have been transplanted into this photograph, but with my family and i replacing erin. the difference being that i am not quite so miserable, but definitely annoyed, but more importantly that i am old enough that my parents don't really care whether i like lighthouses or not and i am old enough to know that no amount of pouting will make the minutes move by faster.
i never really thought of my parents as the type who would take trips to look at lighthouses. i don't know if i should approve or not. in some ways, it seems like they're 10 years too young to be doing such things, but i guess it could be worse. at least they seem to be something that is mutually interesting for my parents, which i suppose is rare. i think that they appeal to the historian in my father and offer another source of trivia for him to challenge my brother and i with. for my mom, they evoke the romanticism and adventure of a nautical life. me, i don't really care. i think that i would have liked them as a child. i do remember fondly some childrens book, perhaps titled "keep the light burning annie" about a lighthouse keeper's daughter who is given the task of keeping the light burning amidst a great storm in her father's absence. the problem, i think is that as a young adult the past, present, and future begin to become delineated. where once you could envision yourself as a sailor or a lighthouse keeper and the rugged adventure of that life, as you get older you realize how foreign that is and you start defining your adventures in the realm of what is possible in a rural subdevelopment or perhaps abandon them altogether.
posted by geoff on 8/18/2003 11:20:05 AM
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this is one of the funniest things i've seen in a long time. not exactly consistent with what i saw of frat life on defiance, ohio tour though. after the show in birmingham alabama, some kids offered us a place to stay, and we took them up on that offer. somewhere in the conversation the words "frat house" kept coming up but i just thought it was an ironic house name, or maybe a former frat house turned punk house like the one we played at in bufallo. but, when we reached the security checkpoint outside of the gated and ultra-posh looking birmingham southern university, i realized that this was a frat house for real. the kids who offered us a place to stay were very nice, but on a whole, i think some of the other frat kids hated us. we got sprayed by a fire extinquisher for one, and it's tough to tell if that was just drunken antics or some kind of primal territory marking. in any case, i went to bed before the naked dude dance party really infuriated the frat kids and before i had to be subjected to any fucked up utterances, but i'm told that both were pretty intense that night. in any case, i appreciated the kids who were nice enough to give us a place to stay, and the fact that decent people can be involved in fucked up institutions. i just hope that they can maintain the confidence to change them rather than just accomodating the things that they might disagree with. i'm also a bit distressed at how easily we all slipped in to staying there. i guess it just shows that punk or frat kid, middle class is middle class and that creates a commonality that's far stronger than most punk kids would like to admit. it's sad that oftentimes punk resembles the privilage, mindlessness, and elitism of a frat just as much as it resmbles something more meaningful, community oriented, or diverse.
posted by geoff on 8/18/2003 11:16:18 AM
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