7 a.m. pastoral
Four hours of sleep?
That’s not enough sheep.
De Scriptura MMXII (250th Post Skeptacular!)
Friends and lovers, I place before you Our Daily Beard’s 250th post.
On this fauxmentous occasion, online writing seems like a fitting topic. Some of you may recognize sections of the following that have previously appeared in your lives in the form of drunken rants, sober rants, out-of-character serious Facebook statuses, and so on and so forth.
For years, I put off starting this blog. Although I liked the idea of having my own place online, I’d always found blogs annoying and pointless, and I assumed everyone would justifiably feel the same way about mine. Then, in the summer of 2009, I went to some writing workshops at SFU. Every instructor mentioned that it was important for a writer to have a website. My whole thing at the time was that I was going to start incorporating writing into my life and into my identity in a serious way, so very soon after I got home from the workshops I logged into WordPress and the Beard was born. But the title of my first post (“Is This Really Necessary?”) was a good indication that I still had little idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. A bunch of people in the writing and publishing business had told me to, so I did. I’ve always been above-averagely good at following directions.
Within a couple of weeks, though, it stopped feeling like an obligation. I really enjoyed writing posts. And soon unobligated people began to read them, which felt great. The answers to my initial two questions are obvious now: what I’m doing is writing whatever I want, and why I’m doing it is because the internet is the second-best place (nothing beats a live audience) to do experiments with ideas and language and make them immediately accessible to others. The more I posted, the less worried I became about the blog having a single theme or being written in a consistent style or genre. The whole kickass point of it, I realized, was that it was a place where people could check out all the elements of my creativity and character and follow along with the ones that appealed most to them. As a person and as a writer, I appreciate versatility and I’m even downer with authenticity. I decided I didn’t need to worry about investing time or energy into corralling my posts into a unifying theme; irregardless of their surface dissimilarity, they were already united by their author’s identity.
Also, over time, when/if my writing career progressed and I began to be published, readers who visited my website wouldn’t end up blogslogging through substanceless posts on how many words I’d written that day (who cares?), vague descriptions of projects I was thinking about doing (that time would be better spent actually working on the projects), or reviews of my work (who cares?: the sequel). People could show up here and get like a million more words’ worth of the writing that had made them want to knock on my door in the first place.
So there I was, just e-givin’ ‘er. But then, during classes in my creative writing program, in the heyday of the Sunday Afternoon Blog Parody Series no less (now defunct, but resurrectable at a moment’s notice!), I began to hear strange and terrible things about online writing. Bizarre, mystifying things like:
“A blog post shouldn’t exceed 500 words.”
This declaration often comes with additional lowest-common-denominator bullhonky like “A blog post without an image attached is impossible for human beings to comprehend” and “Numerical lists are the best way to present information.”
I’ve never come across a convincing, legitimate reason why I should be, or why any writer should be, pursuing the affection of borderline illiterate readers with five-minute attention spans. Not that there’s anything wrong with writing a 500-word post or including an image with it when appropriate. But the thought that that’s the only way, that a person can’t sit still past word 500 or will find written words insufficient in themselves–malarky!
Further malarkish thinking can be found here:
“Your blog’s legitimacy is determined by the number of comments it receives.”
I’ve read way too many way too long e-mails about how comments are a big deal and any blog worth reading gets at least x many comments per day/post/whatever. And so then this of course leads to friends setting up little alliances whereby they all agree to visit each other’s websites way too often to leave meaningless comments. How does this kind of behaviour have anything to do with writing quality? Doesn’t original and compelling writing legitimize itself? Cinnamon cocks!
And finally, men of Athens, just when you’ve begun to think that maybe the people around you have run out of ridiculous ideas, here comes the assholiest one of all:
“You are a brand.”
Writers and editors at all stages of their careers, many of them people whose work I respected, were letting this phrase escape the barrier of their teeth like it was an obvious fact. From it sprang other ideas about how you should be able to “define yourself” in a sentence or two in a query letter, “market yourself” to publishers and potential readers, etc. But can anyone explain to me how this could fail to be a path to mediocrity and pigeonholing, though? I’m not a brand; I’m a human being. I’m changing all the time and so is language and so is my use of it. My curiosity about how those three facts will intersect on a given day is the main reason why I love writing. I’m suspicious of any writer who wants to define herself. Etymologically, “define” means limit. “I write x.” Fuck that shit. I’m taking the whole damn alphabet, and I’m going to do whatever I want with it.
A writer has no business inviting any kind of creativity-undermining BS into her text, online or anywhere else. The challenge of earning an audience in a place where space is free and unlimited is to maintain a high standard of integrity and sincerity and interestingness while you’re there, am I right? I’m right. Now let’s get out there and ignore the bejesus out of the heaps of thoughtless, limit-inducing writing advice that plague humanity and let our brains contentedly eff around with language until they’ve told us all of their ideas, which should happen right around never o’clock.
[insert image of choice here]
Word count: 1067
Just for the Halibut
I made this for my sister yesterday (quite sure I’m in the running for the 2012 Productive Use of Time Award). Now Bearding it for other fans of the musical stylings of the 1960s, if any. It’s funny because of the homonym-based play on words. Drop me a line if you need more information.
“Drop me a line” is funny because it’s an angling idiom in an ichthyocentric post.
“Icththyocentric” is funny because it’s a made-up word but it looks all scientific and legit.
I could go on and on about puns and words that are not words, but I have to switch my laundry.
For those interested in the setting, my crazy piece of work neighbour is screaming and crying in the background for reasons pertaining to her dysfunctional relationship (tautology?).
Theory vs. Practice
I spent last year preparing millions of lesson plans for imaginary ESL classes. Each of these assignments would start off with two or three pages of detailed background information about the students, the class, the curriculum, the possible problems that could arise and the solutions by which I proposed to handle them (the “teacher” was neither instructed nor expected to take her real-life character flaws into account when completing this section), etc., and then the lesson plan itself would be page after page of meticulously organized and described information slotted into a five- or six-column grid. Needless to say, the whole thing was typed and came complete with ten or eleven worksheets, all of which, also needless to say, I had happily created from scratch. It was fun to invent activities, so much more fun than photocopying them out of a textbook. It was a delight to spend five days writing a unit on English literature. It was no trouble to spend an evening anally cutting out cards for a game that would be played only by hypothetical students. I did very well in my program, graduating with a something-point-something GPA and, having given the finger to two bleak unemployed years, walking briskly into a fullish-time teaching position, the details of which I won’t get into, but best believe I’m already a balled-up hedgehog of anxiety about work tomorrow.
On my first day, seconds after removing my coat, I was told that in lieu of orientation I would be tossed into a classroom to sub for someone.
Friends and lovers, there are many salient differences between theory and practice.
To the teaching program students who will stumble across this page: this is what a real lesson plan looks like. It only takes ten minutes to make, because that’s how much time you have before the class starts.
Become a Successful Poet in This Many Easy Steps
An olde-tyme classic from mid-yesteryear. Sandwiched in with some other things and delivered deadpan to room-wide approval December Something, 2011. Now appearing online for the first time. Wonderful!
Have an idea. It must be original. It mustn’t be too personal. It mustn’t be too impersonal. It must express universal themes. It mustn’t be too abstract.
Envision the finished product. Begin freewriting.
Be detailed and descriptive. Paint a vivid picture for the reader. Use as few words as possible. Show, don’t tell. Tell, if the story requires it. Don’t leave out punctuation; that’s confusing. Don’t use too much punctuation; that’s prose. Be unconventional. Don’t use participles. Don’t use adverbs. Don’t use articles. Rhyme is not in fashion right now. Form is not in fashion. Structure the poem carefully. Don’t use a metre; metre is archaic. Use a strong rhythm. Impose no limits whatsoever on the text. Convey meaning through contradictions. Don’t use irony.
Visualize your audience as you write. Don’t write for others. Find good first readers. Pay no attention to other people’s opinions. Accept criticism graciously. Trust your intuition.
Don’t imitate. Acknowledge your predecessors. Write in an original style. Write what you know. Don’t write about yourself. Don’t be conceited. Don’t be too intelligent. Don’t be poetic in quotation marks. Don’t be unsubtle. Be accessible. Don’t do what the reader expects. Don’t let anyone tell you how to write.
Don’t be timid. Don’t be fake. Don’t be depressed. Don’t be anxious. Don’t think about how few people read poetry. Be realistic. Don’t be self-conscious. Be yourself.
Edit the poem zero times. Edit the poem fifty times. Edit the poem between zero and fifty times. Edit the poem the correct number of times. Edit the poem until it is finished. Don’t overedit the poem. The poem is never finished.
Submit the poem everywhere. Publication leads to publication. Don’t worry about publication or your work will suffer. Always list your publications in your author bio so that readers will take you seriously.
Make an impression.
Erase your footsteps.
Retrospecticus
In my old age I’ve started to prefer January 1 to December 25, because today everyone gets what they really wanted all along: an ending and a beginning. CLEAN SLATE, MUTHAFUCKAS!!
Of course it’s going to degenerate into the same crap as usual, of course it is, starting tomorrow, but today, god love us, we’re too optimistic to care. Behold the contagious enthusiasm of the Facebook statuses of all of your friends this morning, cheerfully complementing last night’s Good riddance, 2011, you asshole! sentiments with proclamations about the glorious future. Obviously this year I will finally get everything I need! Love and money and confidence and enough sleep and daily exercise and writing every weekend and the dysfunctional bitch next door breaking up with her equally obnoxious girlfriend and losing her passion for awful house music, yeah! So fuck you, reality, and fuck your friends! Fuck you, economy! Especially fuck you, human psychology! Job stress, insecurity, anemia, one-hour commute, fuck you all, I’m wearing an adorable new shirt and there’s a three frying pan brunch sizzling on my stove and 2012 is my sexy bitch and I’m flipping a double bird at the past! How do you like me now? Hangover or not, January 1 is wonderful, like the first day of a new semester when all your school supplies are still in the wrappers and you haven’t yet failed a test or embarrassed yourself socially or read anything boring.
(Uh… [looks away nervously])
By way of expurgation I’ll start by tossing it out there, from behind the shelter of the miraculous new livably-paying job in my field that I’m starting on, holy shit, Tuesday, that 2011, and let’s definitely throw in 2010 as well, was/were (sorry, this is one of those sentences that hit a grammatical wall midway through because of a subordinate clause that pluralizes the verb, or does it?, who the fuck knows) the most exhausting, terrifying, and demoralizing of my life. Objectively speaking, moving here in 2010 was a mistake, one of my worst. I’ve done my best to turn it around, and life seems, touch wood infinity, to be working out half-decently at last. Now let us never speak of it again. Let us only always ever look forward from now on.
Just for s&g I had a look at my resolutions from last year and I’m batting above .500, which is pretty respectable, baseball-wise at least, and maybe even real-life-wise. Here’s a rundown:
- 1a: No form poetry for three months. Done!
- 1b: No writing shit that trivializes real situations and difficult emotions with sarcasm. Done! Done in public in front of a microphone, for that matter. Nobody laughed, and a few people cried, so there.
- 2. Get a library card. Totally done! See you later this week, VPL; I need a book on teaching phonics to adults.
- 3. Have an actual birthday party. Well, I worked on my birthday, then I had a grammar exam. I did go out for a drink with a friend afterward and she gave me a great gift (a bottle of rum and an order of ginger beef!), and the bartender gave us a free birthday shot, which unfortunately was bourbon. Nice enough night, but not by any means a party. FAIL.
- 4. Improve the employment circumstances. At the eleventh hour, done!
- 5. Various blog-inappropriate personal life things: FAIL. Let’s just leave it there, sports fans.
- 6. Find Kraken rum in Vancouver. Done, done, done. Three bottles.
- 7. Singlehandedly end world suffering: FAIL. But that was a joke one so I’m not being too hard on myself about it.
Now then, 2012. New year, new goals. I still get skeptical about resolutions because I don’t think it’s really fair to announce to the world that you’re going to accomplish such-and-such by a particular date, unless it’s something you have 100% control over, which is nothing in life. Still, though, there’s the magical pull of January 1. And last year’s didn’t work out so badly.
Hmm…
1. Make a trip to Calgary in the next four months. Or five at the very latest. Time it properly so that I get to see everyone I can reasonably expect to see there. Oh, and don’t get a fucking cold as soon as the plane lands. This one is number one because it’s just obvious and must obviously happen. Literally I will withdraw $300 from the bank after I get my first paycheque. I will put it in an envelope marked “Calgary 2012.” I will hand it over to WestJet by mid-April. In August 2011 I left a partially finished bottle of Lemon Hart in the home of two good friends who were away at the time. I promised to return to drink it, and I am a promise keeper if ever there was one.
2. Earn a livable income as an ESL teacher for 12 straight months. For realsies, I was trained to do this on top of also having been born to do it, so let’s make it happen, Cap’n.
3, redux. Have an actual birthday party. I’m throwing this in again even though when I think about it all my friends here would probably be weirded out by each other and it would be the weirdest time. Okay, at the very least I expect myself to effect a gathering of three to five people, and no offense to my own baking skillz but I want a cake that I didn’t make, and I want some kind of informal toast (preferably with Burt Reynolds shots) to my bad self having reached age 32. It seems that 16-year-old me was wrong about me, lifespan-wise.
4. Don’t let work stress and busyness keep me from reading and writing. Like, no lesson planning on the Skytrain. No activity preparation on weekends. That type of thing. I hear a lot of people referring to taking a reasonable break to do something they enjoy as “me time.” That expression makes me want to punch things; what two-year-old came up with it? I just hope I’ve changed enough since leaving grad school to be capable of creating a decent balance between work and other equally important aspects of my essence or whatever you want to call it. I did very little writing this year, not only because I was busy with school but because I felt guilty and anxious every time I did something that wasn’t homework, volunteer work, or a job application. That attitude needs to make its way into the toilet post-haste, because my revised manuscript and fuckin’ great poems aren’t going to produce themselves. Teacher or not, I moved here to write.
5. Start running again. I stopped in the late summer for health-related reasons, most of which are now mostly resolved, so once it quits being dark and rainy I’ll have no damn excuse not to get out there and give’r.
That feels like plenty. I’m not going to be stupid enough to list the personal life things a second time; they depend on other people changing in extreme ways and who am I to resolve for someone else to start being different. Maybe instead I should try to resolve to try to accept that these people are who and how they are and maybe some day they’ll come around, figuratively and/or literally, and maybe they won’t, and I’m most likely the exact same amount of lovable irregardless. Irregardless!
So. Onward. Employment! Adorable shirts! Clean slate! Hash browns-sausages-crepes trifecta!
Calgary people, I’ll see you soon. The doorbell tolls for thee.
Merry Chthuluristmas!
Between whipping off job applications, trudging through a stack of idiotic credential application paperwork, and totally dominating Cheap Safeway Day (saved 24%, suckas!), I stole myself an hour to bake some delicious gingerbread cookies today. I knew they were going to be top quality because I used a friend’s recipe and it has been previously established as being the business. (For a split second I just imagined myself trying to describe the grammar of the verbs in that sentence to an ESL student. It was a horrible experience for both of us.) The cookies come out chewy and actually stay that way. Top shelf. Plus I got to use my rolling pin for its actual purpose instead of what I normally use it for: tenderizing meat, and banging on the ceiling when the people upstairs are being obnoxious.
Anyway, I slid two sheets of gingerbread people into the oven and this is what I got. Coincidentally (?), my hand mixer burnt out today after 32+ years of service. A friend has theorized that the “special” cookie on the cooling rack had some connection to the mixer’s death. Anything is possible at this magical time of year.
Merry Chthuluristmas! May you and your loved ones forever feel the OctoLord’s tentacles tickling the back of your neck.
Post Postscript: After posting this post I recalled the appearance of a suspiciously eight-legged creature surrounded by sacrificial offerings of pickles and mustard at my cousin’s wedding after-party. It’s important to be aware that dark forces are always at work, even–no: especially–during a family picnic in springtime. This little guy will be haunting the halls of your subconscious tonight…
Jam the Printer
A few weeks ago my incredible dissertating BFF was annoyed by a printer jam at her office and wrote a perfectly reasonable Facebook status about it. I sprang into action immediately. Later, a sympathetic comment from a friend led to the composition of the chorus. The unnecessary, inappropriate lyrics below (minus the second verse) went over especially well with the BFF’s aunt, which surprised me at first, but then I was visited by a memory of her becoming similarly excited when Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” was played at her niece’s wedding, and it all started to make more sense.
PREDICTION: “Jam the Printer” will be #1 in several Eastern European countries by the end of January 2012. I should probably get to work recruiting backup dancers for the video.
[techno beat builds up for 1.5 minutes]
Hey, baby, I’m your boss.
Shake that ass like Frisco Sauce.
Love its tightness, love its softness.
Baby, step into my office.
Staff meeting, just us two.
Staring contest, me and you.
Workin’ hard all through the winter.
I’m about to jam the printer.
[techno beat continues with some dubsteppy bass wobblings added]
Man: You got somethin’ against my office equipment?
Lady: I got my ass against your office equipment.
Man: Think my hard drive’s overheated.
Lady: How’d my panties get deleted?
[more of the grinding beat]
Lock the door, turn off the phone.
More gets done when we’re alone.
Here’s a memo: Drop that skirt.
Pop those buttons off that shirt.
Sit that butt up on the copier.
Shit’s about to get much sloppier.
Girl, I brought my one-hole punch.
Think we’ll have to work through lunch.
Grab that chest and stick it right out.
Don’t stress mess; there’s tons of white-out.
So much wood you’ll get a splinter.
I can’t wait to jam the printer.
Lady’s voice: Hello, you’ve reached the office of Dick Sexington. Unfortunately, we are unavailable at this time. Please call back during regular business hours, or leave a message at the tone.
[sexual type sounds,
chorus,
techno beat for 5 more minutes,
slow fadeout]
Well, the inevitable has happened: I’ve finished my teaching program. Exciting times, friends and lovers! My final task will be to complete a program evaluation form, and while my feelings and opinions about the past year are positive for the most part, I do have some constructive suggestions for the department. Since there isn’t enough space for all of my “great ideas” on the form, I’m writing some of them here on the internet, where numbered lists are the only acceptable form of communication.
Here they are: the five TESOL classes I most wish I could have taken this year.
1. Intimidating Unpleasant Students with Barely Detectable Sarcasm. Most students are lovely human beings, but now and then you encounter that one asshole who’s hell bent on ruining the lesson for everyone. These days it’s not permissible to wield a metre stick like the schoolmarms of yesteryear: whip-smart wit is the new strap. The meaning is all in the delivery when you say something like “Great comment; thanks for sharing that,” or “Your grammar is really improving.” Teachers need to learn the broadest possible range of inflection and intonation tricks to disarm the douchebags who would otherwise be destroying the classroom atmosphere with their attitude malfunctions and etiquette disorders.
2. Preparing a Decent Lesson and Materials in Under One Hour While Also Doing Other Things. Sure, it’s satisfying to get a 98% on a one-hour lesson plan that took you seventeen hours to prepare. Oh, you created all of the activities from scratch and meticulously hand-drew the pictures onto all the vocabulary cards and even wrote up a rules sheet for the very clever board game you painstakingly handcrafted out of Bristol board and egg cartons? Great work, nerd! I’m so proud of your stellar GPA! Now seriously, quit that shit. A class in effective corner-cutting would teach the teachers what they really need to learn: how to plan good lessons in the quickest, easiest way–preferably while cooking a meal or watching TV. Prep time is unpaid, and you don’t want to spend your free hours screwing around with egg cartons, am I right? I’m right. If it takes you seven hours to prepare an activity, then you’d better be planning to get at least 70 hours of classroom use out of it. There’s just no excuse otherwise.
3. Speaking Without Contractions. English speakers are lazy as hell. We will take any opportunity to degrade a perfectly good vowel into a schwa, abbreviate a word, make a noun into an adjective, etc., in order to get our thoughts out faster (and keep the rhythm of a sentence alive, of course). Contractions shave seconds off our speaking time every day, but it turns out that ESL speakers have a really hard time dealing with them. The whole deal of “I’ll” and “I will” being the same thing is a one-hour lesson in itself, and then you have to practice the hell out of it for the rest of the semester. If you’ve got a class full of beginner or low intermediate students, you’ll hafta you will have to learn to speak without apostrophes and shortened forms. It’s the weirdest thing to do, and it takes practice to be able to keep it going without feeling like a condescending douche.
4. Keeping a Straight Face Regardless. All kinds of beautifully hilarious things happen by accident in an ESL class, like an advanced student telling you she’s read 1984 but not Enema Farm, or a beginner writing that he lives on the “chicken floor” of his building. While interacting with his/her students, a native speaker quickly realizes how many English words sound like other, funnier English words. At a certain point, the teacher can actually give an entertaining pronunciation lesson on this stuff, but until students reach the advanced level and have absorbed a sufficient amount of North American humour, maintaining an earnest expression is necessary. After all, on a hot summer day, don’t we all like the bitch and find a cold Cock refreshing?
5. Using Archaic Technology. Teaching departments frequently offer seminars on learning how to use the SmartBoard or the computer station/projector/surround sound systems that seem to have quietly installed themselves in most classrooms while no one was looking, but in my experience, a teacher is more likely to be in a position of having to use one of those gigantic 1980s cassette players, or an overhead projector–or, god forbid, a filmstrip player. Teachers younger than 30 have never encountered these obsolete machines and need to be taught what they are and how they work.
All of these should be offered as electives at the very least. It’s too late for me; I’m sure I’ll have eight jobs and be raking in the Lauriers hand over fist (what in the hell does that expression mean? I’m trying to visualize it physically and it’s not working out at all) two months at the most from now. But future students would be better equipped to handle the real-life demands of the classroom if they got a little more practical instruction and a little less “Go spend the next two weeks writing a 20-page lesson plan”!
If You Don’t Love Shepherd’s Pie, You’re Making It Wrong
It’s shitty out. Stay indoors. Make a shepherd’s pie. If you live alone it’ll last for days. If you don’t then you’ll have to make another one tomorrow, I’m afraid. Here’s an infallible recipe:
- Boil four potatoes and mash a shitload of butter into them. Set aside.
- Meanwhile, fry some chopped onions and carrots and whatever else you like in a shitload of butter.
- In another pan, brown a clump of ground beef.
- Slide the slippery vegetables in with the meat. Add pepper and a bunch of beef broth. Fry ‘er up.
- Dump contents of frying pan into a 9×13 receptacle. Slap buttery potatoes on top.
- Cook at 400 for half an hour. Remove from oven.
- Sprinkle grated cheddar cheese on top, broil for 3 minutes.
- Eat 2-4 helpings.
Recommended beverage pairing: hot chocolate.
