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Thursday, 11 September 2008

Wednesday, 11 June 2008

Tuesday, 18 April 2006

  • If one ever has the opportunity to become a sitting member on anything even loosely termed: Curriculum Committee, one would be well served to lie down and avoid it. I write this with terrifying first-hand knowledge. Curriculum Committees only exist in quantum states - they occur simultaneously in twelve co-existent dimensions of space and time, and it is only when some high school administrative jerkoff from Screwjob City decides to ruin an hour and a half after school for every department chair that Curriculum Committees even begin to form. Naturally, we perceive them from our tiny partition of time/space reality to be some necessary component to the governance of an educational facility. It would maybe even appear as though being invited to sit on such committees would be an (gulp) Honor.  This is pure fiction, of course. The "reality" of the situation is almost laughably contrary. In truth, there can be no necessary reason to form a Curriculum Committee. The decisions made and topics discussed have either already been decided or discussed by the individual members of the committee. And if department chairs are to facilitate communication between the lowly, cloistered teachers and our radiant, swollen Headmaster, this committee thing seems like a lot of hassle compared to the relative efficiency of a Suggestion Box outside BigHead's office - like one of those Jewish boxes on the outside of doorways...a Mezusah? Musesah? (Who made up Hebrew, anyway? Dr. Seuss?)* - each "suggestion" would amount to an expression of faith-based obediance. So the whole liaison-thing doesn't hunt, either. Ergo - it is my opinion that the un-natural occurance of such a pointless meeting for that period of time; the UNholy moment a group of low-level administrators sits together and begins to take MINUTES... It is at this moment that a terrible, gaping hole begins to form at the center of our continuum. Moons split and suns freeze. Time yawns and all reason; intelligibility; sense; order; substance; and without a doubt PURPOSE  - these things mean nothing in the great temporal wound we call Curriculum Committee.  For years I tried to deny it, too. Surely that's too absurd to be true, right? I mean, the alternative would seem to shed the blame for unrelenting hours of mindless tedium on the people on the committee. That would, in fact, condemn the intelligence and propriety of each and every member - including myself.  Now THAT'S absurd!

    Anywho. I managed to pass through the Curriculum Committee in relative repair. The beauty of passing through a vortex in the fabric of Logic and Reason is that you usually don't remember what the hell just happened, so there is a silver lining to the whole mind-screwing experience. Nature is so cool.

    * That by the way is a secular-crack at the root-origins of the language and is in no way meant in a religious or ethnic vein. Don't get me started on german, oy vey!

Tuesday, 11 April 2006

  • Teacher. This name of names ascribed to me by virtue of a job in education, itself an ethereal, formless concept endlessly approached, more often mimicked in the guise of school. I am a teacher, in this school. A sweaty sack of bile and bone in a cheap tie and in the simian process of mimicking the manufactured: teacher. With a modicum of addition, it is readily apparent that for what I take to be my I, there is but less of me than the baseless, costumed marionette leaping about in an irrational fear of disappointing some larger force he cannot hope to comprehend. Now that’s a freakin’ onion metaphor - like one of those Russian toys in which each figurine hides a slightly smaller identical twin, and so forth. If I am broadly viewed as a hetero male American Protestant teacher in a state named Florida on a planet called earth, then it is equally lamentable that each of those categories should be sub-divided and, redundantly, re-sub-divided ad infinitum. The frightening thing about those Russian toys, and quite possibly the reason for their popularity the world over, is that none of the figurines is any more real or authentic than any other figurine. They’re all hollow, deceptive and hollow. No core. No center. No nascent being. Just diminishing quantities of negative space.

     

    Dude. It was a long day at work. I should have stuck with economics in college. Sure, chasing the concept of money may be as illusory as that of knowledge, but if you’ve ever tried to teach cultural philosophy to an audience who could care less simply because the grades don’t count, well, you begin to appreciate the idea of self-inflicted schadenfreude – or masochism – or masochistic irony. Those work, too. And what if, in the worst case scenario, I did graduate with an economics degree and got that phat corporate job, perhaps middle management, and I still wasn’t fulfilled? Well, at least I’d have a cool set of wheels and some trophy-wife-lovin’ every other week. I can admit openly, but with some amount of frustrated shame, that other than suburban girls (who get Jettas on their sweet sixteenth), nobody really thinks these cars are “cool”. As for the wife, my trophy hasn’t been loved for months. It is, in fact, just another diminishing quantity of negative space. Sigh.

Thursday, 30 March 2006

  • I realize that the mere suggestion of returning full tilt to the xanga arena may send at least two loyal readers into fits of joyful celebration (or sarcastic ecstasy - whichever), but I caution all the bored consumers of my ritualistic pap  that this single entry does not designate a comeback. Most comebacks involve lots of secretive training out of the public eye, right? Then there are the third-person cut-a-ways that demonstrate the iron willed determination of the subject to "show those bastards" what they were apparently neglecting. Well, in this case, I haven't done anything approximating training, and I can't even convincingly argue that tremendous events of interest and insight have accumulated in the months that have passed since my last correspondence. Fact is, I just lost the inspiration. Perhaps I could write about that, eh? Sod it. I bored myself at the suggestion. Maybe dating. Dating seemed to be fertile ground for run-on sentence-making and sardonic hyperbole. Everyone enjoys reading how screwed up other people are when it comes to sex and love - if this weren't the case, Oprah wouldn't have much of a list (unless there's a whole underground genre of literature meeting the needs of female Trekkies and goths who prefer Sleepless in Seattle to the Matrix. It would be a crossbreed of true crime, action/sci-fi and general fiction. Sort of Tuesdays with Morrie meets the Martian Chronicles).

    Imagine: Planet Libido - a new kind of sanctuary for convicted Catholic priests and America's finest female writers. All citizens of Libido must live under tyrannical robot mothers that feed like vampires on self-esteem. So too, must all male Libidos feign heterosexuality and compensate for the existential pretense with repeated self-abuse and periodic road-tripping to Vegas for "girls' nites!"  A minor rebellion was narrowly averted in the early years of colonization when it was discovered that the same pair of denim trousers would not, contrary to conventional wisdom, fit everyone on the planet, let alone contrive to make everything okay. Authorities were quick to respond, asserting that dramatic weight fluctuations should be mandated to alleviate the practicality of owning pants altogether. Within one lunar year, a typical colonist must now lose or gain the difference between the masses of Rene Zellweger and Star Jones, respectively. Obviously, some lunar years are easier than others.

    And since I have now conspired to write myself so far off-topic (or lack thereof) that I cannot in good faith make any valid effort to return, I shall endeavor to ignore whatever it was I thought I was saying in the first place. ...and...done.

    I do however have a lovely bit of verse that I meant to include in what now is a very old entry about being sick at work. I believe I was in a meeting (see: AERM) and I forgot that the following is the only tangible reward for my attendance that fine, illin' day. It's not good poetry in the least, but it does convey a sense of the absurd that I believe supports the equally absurd premise of that December day.

    Mete Me at Three-thirty  (bitch!)*

    My job deals with people

    meeting people

    meeting other people

    about people we didn't invite to meet (yet).

    Meetings meting meetings about people meting other people in meetings about people who couldn't meet because they couldn't meet their schedule, meting disaster.

    Such meting of meetings demands an awful amount of time.

    And always, I leave meetings with my expectations having never been met.

    Clearly, I need to meet some better people.

    * I just tacked this on. It was never intended to be a part of the formal (ahem) moniker. I apologize for being crass and if, in the process of selfishly amusing myself, I offended any bitches.

JoelSchwaab

  • Visit JoelSchwaab's Xanga Site
    • Name: Joel Q.
    • Country: United States
    • Gender: Male
    • Member Since: 5/23/2004

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