So here’s the deal. There’s this new-”ish” literary mag called G.U.D. (Greatest Uncommon Denominator). I got the first issue a while back and was really surprised at the quality of the production. So much so that I brought it into my writing class and passed it around, and pretty much everyone loved it. Not just the fiction and poetry, but the mag itself. I missed the second issue (I blame the 10,000 pages or so I had to read for grad school) but have been keeping my ear to the vine, as it were, and heard nothing but good stuff about the content.

Well, time certainly does fly, and they are all set to launch their third issue and are having this little contest. Go and check it out, and take a gander at the rest of their site, too. GUD folks over there. I have been nothing but impressed with the community they are developing. Seems to fit hand and glove with their product.

Keep up the G.U.D. work!

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That’s how many days of High School are left. There’s still finals, and graduation, and all the accompanying hoopla, but only 12 days of classes. I think I am as excited for the year to be over as my students. I keep thinking of all the things I have let slip while maintaining the schedule of Grad School and High School. I haven’t picked up the guitar since last August. My posting here slacked off to once or twice a month. I haven’t built even a tenth of the additions to the website that I have planned out in my head (and now I have the itch to redesign the whole thing again!). I haven’t really had the time to read much of anything outside schoolwork or stuff that pertains to my thesis. So yes, I am just as happy as summer to get here as my students are.

It was a bit of a surprise how time consuming teaching turned out to be. I have been told that it becomes less intensive in the second year, which makes sense assuming that the same courses are being taught, but I was unprepared for what was going to be required of me just to be prepared for class. Add in the time required to grade 150+ essays two or more times a month (50 graded yesterday, 100 more in the cue for the rest of the weekend) and it would be an understatement to say that my expectations were naive.

Regardless, I discovered I really enjoy the time spent inside the classroom. Sure, there are times where the kids drive me nuts (just as, I am sure, there are times when I drive them nuts), but at the end of the day, I actually feel pretty good about myself and what I am doing. And that’s a sentiment I haven’t had about a job in a very, very long time. I think I’ll even miss it a little next year, as I am going to be going to grad school full time to finish the Masters in one fell swoop. At least now I know I have yet another employment option when I finish the degree.

And that is what I look for most in almost all my decisions… options. The ability to always have a choice, and the courage to take responsibility for those choices… that, I think, is the key to happiness. Or, rather, it is the key to my happiness. The key to your happiness may well be a seven layer burrito for I know. I can’t help you there, unfortunately. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.

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On the turntable: Dave Matthews Band, Blues Traveler, Velvet Revolver, Prince

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And I blame Hotmail.

I have had a Hotmail account(s) for well over ten years now. In fact, I think the only communication tools I use that are older are ICQ and the US Postal Service. I used to use the hotmail address specifically as a gaming account. Whenever I registered for a game, online or otherwise, I would use that email. By the time I stopped using it, about 8 or so years ago, it had become utterly useless as an email account due to the vast amount of spam it collected. I haven’t been to the in-box there in I don’t know how long and, unless they recycle inactive accounts, I shudder to think of what the spam box must look like.

Still, though, I used their IM service to keep in touch with some friends, so I didn’t turn it off completely, regardless of how much the MSN Messenger application sucks tiny brown dust bunnies. Interestingly, to this day, I have friends who use only MSN Messenger. I also have friends that use only ICQ, and others that use only Yahoo, so, naturally, I switched to solutions that allowed me to run a single app. Currently, I use Pidgin (thanks Nick!), and I find it more than suitable for my minimal needs (not to mention it has a very active dev community). But, alas, I digress… back to Messenger.

I am not sure how I am suddenly such a popular fellow to the IM Spam artists out there. I don’t publish my hotmail address anywhere. I don’t publish my MSN handle anywhere. Somehow, though, I have landed on some porn site’s list, and I am getting flooded with adverts for webcams bimbos and other assorted nonsense. I just received my fifth since starting this post, actually.

The reason I blame Hotmail? They are easy to blame, and they won’t care anyway. And they are owned by MS, so what other reason do I really need? Most likely it has nothing to do with Hotmail at all, though. Most likely someone mined MSN addresses from somewhere and mine got sold to some crazy blast IM service not too different from the blast email services that fill up our in-boxes with Cialis ads.

Needless to say, I am a bit irked. But, there is a solution to my irkness. Those of you whom I chat with on MSN, you have about a week (or less, depending on my mood) to contact me about my handles on other services (ICQ, GTalk, Yahoo, AOL). After that, I am going to disappear from MSN, most likely for good. In the world of IM, there are other options, and one less app to load at startup makes me happy.

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I won’t even try to describe how busy I have been between school and… well… school. I think, though, that maybe I have a handle on the workload now and can get back to updating once a week or so. Along with that comes a return to reading books for me and not for one school or another. And that’s how I am going to ease my way back into a regular posting pattern again. Talking about books. Specifically, what books are next on my reading list and why.

Before I get into all that, though, I need to emphasize that whatever order I come up with for the next 4 or 5 books is tentative, at best. I know, I say that each and every time I post something about what’s on my bedside stack. But this time it’s a little different. I haven’t heard anything official yet, but Amazon is finally listing George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons with a release date and a pre-order option. And yes, I pre-ordered it. And, also yes, I know that it will likely come out after their posted release date of September 30^th. But that’s ok. I have waited this long, another few months won’t kill me. Besides, it gives me time to re-read the first four books. I’ll probably start them in July, or maybe as early as June if I get really anxious, so it won’t cut into my next 6 or so reads. But eventually the publishing world will need to go on without me as I re-immerse myself in Westeros and have a walk with Jon and Bran and all the rest. Martin’s series easily ranks among my favorite reads of the last ten to fifteen years, and part of me is almost sad that this release will mark the end of the series [ed. ok... there are two more books left after ADOD. Thanks Ms. Gilmore for pointing this out to me. 4 more years of breathless anticipation!]

For now, though, I am content with catching up on the books I received as gifts over the holidays. First up is Talk to the Hand by Lynne Truss, and it has me in absolute laugh out loud stitches every time I pick it up. I had never read Eats, Shoots, & Leaves, and, sure enough, as soon as I started talking about Talk to the Hand, someone went out and bought me its predecessor, which will now close out the books I have on my gifted list.

After Truss, I have Orwell’s Animal Farm to brush up on before I teach it to my freshmen.

And then comes Stross. Charles Stross. I don’t even want to think about how long various books by Stross have been on my reading list. Finally though, a friend down in the Lone Star State had enough of my reading trash like Martin, Card, Hawthorne, and LeGuin, and gave me The Jennifer Morgue without knowing that I had never managed to get The Atrocity Archives, the book to which it is a sequel, off my increasingly crowded To Buy list. So, of course, me being me, I immediately ordered The Atrocity Archives and moved them as close to the front of my To Read list as I dared. And there they sit. Just two short books away. I think my palms are sweating.

Next on the list is a gift from a buddy of mine making his way out in that crazy land of Hollywood. I gave up on that town years ago, but he is well on his way to taking it by storm, so when this arrived in a padded envelope from him, I was more than a little excited. Anytime someone with dyslexia recommends a book to me, I take them seriously. And when they are a writer and filmmaker, doubly so. Peter Baskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is all about the Hollywood of legend… the mecca of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll that both entranced and mortified the rest of the nation back in the late sixties and early seventies. Or at least that’s what the jacket says. My friend, knee deep in the same industry that I left and that this book seems to both worship and vilify, says it is quite simply the most fascinating book on the film industry he has ever read. And that’s enough for me.

Bookending the list is the other Truss book I mentioned, Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Yes, I am reading them out of order. No, I am not going to stop now and fix it. I got them out of order, they aren’t a series, so I will read them out of order. If it bugs you, then by all means, start talking amongst yourselves and get a little more coordinated as to when you get me gifts!

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