59

This is the number of points the Fightin Texas Aggie Men's Basketball team gave up to Texas Tech University tonight on their way to an 88-83 loss. Nothing like blowing that nice 48-29 lead from halftime. 

For those of you scoring at home, here's just how bad Tech is this year:

Other than a fluke win in a meaningless game at Kansas (which is no small accomplishment, but who knows if anyone on scholarship even made it into the game for KU) the Red Raiders beat Baylor and Colorado this year. These two teams boast a combined Big 12 record of 6-26. Colorado actually only won ONE GAME this year. That's good company you've put us in Ags.

So, will we make the tournament? Selection Sunday is getting closer by the minute, and the forecast is suddenly much more cloudy than it was this times last night.

Watchmen

I just finished reading Alan Moore's Watchmen. These are the lines that are sticking with me the longest. I haven't gone through it with a fine tooth comb to ensure they are my favorites, but it's safe to say they are up there. If these lines pique your interest, you won't regret spending time with it over spring break. 

Also, this is how Moore has divided the monologue up. The following text doesn't fit with the typical standards for correct punctuation, but it's the best I can do via the blog.

"...But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget...

"I forget.

"We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away."

"Come... Dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.

"Dry your eyes...

"... And let's go home."

If nothing else, next time you are at a bookstore, flip open a copy to pages 27 & 28 of chapter 9. The illustrations are fantastic (at least in my very unknowledgeable opinion :).

R.I.P. Circuit City... wait, what am I saying??

This past weekend, Circuit City closed its last store. Despite the fact that it practically turns Best Buy into a monopoly in my home town, I'm thoroughly pleased to see the city of circuits fade into the horizon. 

Why do I show no remorse for  a departed electronics store? Well other than the fact a CIA spy couldn't slide pass the vultures in the red polos circling the store looking for the next commission that might lay helpless in front of an overpriced TV, the way local buyers here in town were deprived of much of anything resembling a decent deal rubbed me the wrong way.

I hate to admit it, but Circuit City always had fairly comparable prices to Best Buy. However, when Mr. Liquidator and his happy bad of apathetic employees showed up, prices on all items shot right back to their MSRP (translation: nearly everything in the store shot up to the manufacturer's suggested retail price from its marked price 30-40% below that). And yet there were cars in the parking lot. Not just a few cars either. The place was packed! Fools! Idiots! They packed the store buying overpriced electronics, marked as 10-25% off the sticker price, that were actually marked up from what the prices were before the bankruptcy was announced. (Don't forget, those were the prices of a company taking its last dying breaths, not terrible deals for the most part...)

Needless to say, I rolled my eyes and decided to come back in two weeks.

I went again ten days later (just couldn't resist any potential deals) and heard people muttering about the next day's discount increase. The next day, I made an interesting discovery. Other than verifying that all the people who were buying up everything the day before and two weeks ago were now snatching up movies, cds, and burnt out TVs for almost as low as Circuit City's original prices, I discovered that large sections of merchandise has suddenly disappeared overnight. Apparently, our local store was on the fast track for the graveyard, while other stores were riding out the wave for an extra month. Most of the merchandise that was worth selling had been shipped out to those other stores to be sold at the higher prices for another month before similar discounts arrived elsewhere.

No Blu-rays. No decent TVs. No computer monitors. Speakers. Video games. Nothing. 

Unless you happened to be in the market for expensive cables or fixtures that a decent electronics store used to run itself into the ground, you were out of luck.

As I watched the crowds, who were not to be stopped by the lack of decent merchandise, snatch up what was left, I realized I had been given one last reason to hate Circuit City. I left without purchasing a single item from their liquidation "sale" and wished there was enough time to pull off something like this in a Circuit City somewhere as my last act of vengeance.

the day of reckoning

I'm a pretty laid back guy in the classroom. On more than one occasion I've been asked if I was having a bad day after beginning to show signs of frustration when my students refused to listen to me. Yesterday, I decided I'd had enough. You see, for today's typical teen, a 2-3 page research paper over anything from the 20th century is an awfully daunting task, especially once I'd told them the topics from last year's paper were off limits. With thirty of the most commonplace ideas wiped out of contention, what else is there to write about? (When I suggested the student watch the video carefully for potential ideas, the student told me there actually wasn't anything to write about World War II. Who knew?)

In response to my students' claims, along with their habitual apathy and disgust, I penned this little note and distributed it to them today in class.

On the first day of school, I made a point to tell each of you that I don’t see teenagers the way that a typical adult (or college student for that matter) does. Your consistently disrespectful attitudes, along with more than a handful of cases of open defiance during the past two or three weeks, have seriously called my assumption into question.

My assumption is based on my experience working with junior high boys. After working with 7^th & 8^th kids for a while, I assumed juniors in high school would at least show the same level of maturity.

When you act like you have, it tells me two things: you think I have nothing to say that is worth listening to, and you couldn’t care less about anyone who isn’t you.

You need to grow up. Some of you are more at fault than others, but each of you is responsible for getting us back on the right track.

If you are part of the problem, stop it. I want to be able to trust you, but right now, I can’t. It’s your job to rebuild that.

If you see the problems happening around you, do something about it! Stop watching me fight against so many of your classmates. Please, help me.

The bottom line is that I no longer trust most of you.

When you walk out of my room for the last time in May, I won’t care if you hate English. Really, it’s not a big deal to me. But, if you can’t see the worth in listening to someone who cares about you, if you can’t pull it together long enough to participate in something that’s less than incredibly entertaining, and if you can’t treat each other better than you do now, I’ve failed. 

I'm very proud of the overwhelming majority of my students' responses, and most remarks could easily be resolved by explaining to my students that they actually need to read the letter. Their classmates were especially helpful in laying on the embarrassment.

Tomorrow will be interesting. Much of the shock of disappointment will have subsided, and hopefully those faithful few arrogant enough to tell me that "this is the way 7th period classes always are" will have cooled down a bit, too. Either way, I feel like I left a positive impression on them today, lasting or not.

Also, to the one girl who I told me she was glad I had finally said something about how people have been acting, "Thanks."

me, myself and the taks test

So, earlier this week, I gave the TAKS test for the first time. Talk about excitement, right? After hearing story after story about why I should assume this four hour time block will be the closest thing to torture I've yet to experience as a teacher, I assumed I was in for the time of my life and prepared for the worst.

Maybe it was because I was pretty nervous about screwing some detail (or, even better, something completely obvious) and invalidating an entire group's attempt to pass the test all of their public education in the great state of Texas had been building toward, but somehow, the time ended up going by pretty quickly.

After thinking about how I was able to survive without a hidden sudoku, a jelly bean taste testing game, or some other distraction to break up the monotony, here's what I've figured out: I'm pretty sure I passed most of the time talking to myself (while diligently monitoring my students' efforts to complete the exam, of course). I'm not sure what's prompting me to share this information either. I guess I just felt like writing something. Who knows?

Next time around, I'll try to take more notes about my conversations and such. Look for those exciting tales in about a month or so.