Help with Shakespeare

I picked up a 3 day gig teaching English at Holland High School, and the lesson plan just says to stretch Hamlet (the one with Mel Gibson) out for 3 days. It was started yesterday, so we're talking 4 days of 50 minute classes for a 2 hour movie. I take as much time as I can with attendance and announcements, and leave a few minutes for discussion at the end, but I just don't know if I can fill the time. One idea I've had is to bring Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead as a last ditch time filler, but having never seen it I don't know if any high school student would get it. I'm going to rent it tonight and watch it anyway, but if anyone (MW I'm looking at you) has seen it and can give some input, it would be greatly appreciated.

Feelin' Old

I had a dream I was trying to either write papers, finish projects, or study for finals for 5 classes all in one weekend. I don't know if the "Oh shit, I haven't studied for finals" dream is something that stays with you through your whole life, or if it was a reaction to spending time in East Lansing this weekend. While celebrating Mikey B's birthday with some kids from West Ottawa, I definitely felt a little out of place. Not just because I was in East Lansing, but the sense of feeling out of place in a group of college kids in general. I felt it this summer when I worked with a younger staff that would be returning this fall as students while I was already 8 months post-graduation, and I felt it this weekend.

I don't think this would be so bad if I actually felt like an adult in its place. But instead, I am stuck in this crappy state of limbo where I'm too old to act like an irresponsible college kid, but not old enough to have any of the positive trappings of adulthood. I don't fit in running with the college crowd at the bars, and I can't afford to visit and keep up with my friends who are working. None of them are raking in a ton of cash, but at least they have a steady source of income. I went through 5 years at U of M and all I got was this lousy diploma.

I know this is a recurring discussion from me and from my blog, but the holiday season keeps pushing it to the forefront. With every relative or friend who's back in town I see, it means another explanation of how the current state of the economy and school systems has left me subbing part time and working at the Gap, but that despite this I am not a loser.

Time Traveling

I talked to St. Louis girl for about an hour on the phone tonight. We did some very cursory catching up on the main events of our lives in the last 10 years, and she told me about some of my other friends from back in the day and their last known whereabouts. If any of you are really curious about more details, I can talk to you in more depth over e-mail, but suffice to say this is a very intriguing situation that I hope to continue to be able to talk about.

Out of the Blue

I checked my e-mail after getting back from work at the Gap this evening, and received a message from someone I have not seen or talked to in nearly 10 years. As many of you know, before I lived in Holland I spent all of elementary and middle school in a small town in Missouri about an hour west of St. Louis. When I was in 8th grade, my parents decided they had had enough of living away from home, and started planning to move back to Michigan. For me at the time, my whole life was in Missouri, and coupled with teenage angst was not at all happy about moving.

Though I successfully adjusted by about halfway through Freshman year of high school, at the time I was quite literally forced to leave all my friends behind. Chief among these friends was the core group of Mike, Nick, and Charlie. And then there was the girl. Angie. She just moved to Missouri that year, and though we were never "going out", we became very close friends.

She e-mailed me because she's now living in Detroit.

It was one of those "I don't know if you remember me, I hope this is the right person" e-mails, so I replied to her letting her know that she got the right person. I have no idea what prompted her to track me down, but all I know is that this is the sort of crazy, out-of-left field thing that just might make my life exciting for the first time in a long time.

Back From Hiatus

I'm so ashamed... I briefly turned in to one of those slacker bloggers who only posts like once a week. However shall I regain your trust that The Rant will be updated with the frequency you have all come to expect? Eh... I'll figure something out.

So, unfortunately, there has been no radical whirlwind of change in my life that has kept me from blogging. After a paperwork day and a training day, I've now officially been put on the schedule at the Gap. We had our Holiday Planning meeting on Sunday to discuss sales promotions and policies during the holiday rush, so let me tell you was that ever exciting. It was mandatory for the whole staff, so seeing all of my coworkers confirmed my suspicion that aside from the management and like one other person, I'm the only one who's not a minor. So far the managers love me because I actually work, unlike the rest of the staff who congregate in the fitting room area and gossip. Sigh... By the way, if you want a 15% off card for use the first weekend of December let me know... I have "Friends and Family" discount cards to give to people.

For good or for ill, I started trying to play Halo 2 on my brother's X-Box. It took me forever to think of a good, unique username, since 350,000 other people have signed up before me and taken all the ones I could think of. I finally came up with one this afternoon, and jumped in where angels fear to tread. Thanks to The Captain I got a free 2 month trial of X-Box Live, so I'm trying to hold my own against 12 year olds in the most basic matches in order to slowly get a handle on how to effectively kill them. Probably a month before Halo 3 is released I'll be good enough to actually jump into random games and not be totally helpless.

So, if I'm not blogging or trying to explain the difference between loose-fit and relaxed-fit jeans, I'll be in Halo-land bitch-slapping 12-year-olds with a rifle stock.

A Little of This, a Little of That

No coherent theme for today's show, just a few random thoughts.

1. You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling
Last night was the annual Treehouse of Horror season premier for The Simpsons. As many have feared, there wasn't a single thing that made me laugh in the episode. It barely held my interest. It was a tired rehash of previous ideas at best, a parody of itself at worst. It was like a Family Guy episode instead of a Simpsons episode. I thought last season showed some promise in reversing the downward trend, but last night took a decidedly sharp plunge. In the past the Treehouse of Horror allowed for some of the most creative and innovative ideas, but last night was just plain sad.

2. The Sound and the Fury
I don't know if it was just named since it only started in full today, or if it was just declassified, but the current major offensive against insurgent stronghold Fallujah is named Operation Phantom Fury. That's how you name a military operation. It harkens back to the good names like Operation Overlord and Operation Desert Storm, not the boring names like Enduring Freedom.

3. Going Dutch
I subbed at Holland High School today, and my continuing experience with the Holland School system makes me even more grateful for having gone to West Ottawa on the North side of town instead. The administration has no idea what's going on, the building seems to have been designed by the monkeys that they couldn't get to use typewriters, and it would appear that on any given day half of the English department is out of the building. By contrast, I was at Grand Haven High School on Friday. The building is like a temple to education, and it seems to be a tightly run ship.

New Stuff - No Politics (for now)

As alluded to in the previous post, the Star Wars Episode III teaser trailer came out on Thursday. After watching it about half a dozen times, I can safely say HOLY SHIT it's going to be awesome! I don't want to hear it from all of you who didn't like Episodes I and II - I'm excited about it and I think it's going to be worth the 20 year wait. Between armies of Wookies, the birth of Darth Vader, and more Natalie Portman hotness, what's not to love?

Also of note, today was my first day "orientation" at the Gap. I filled out my paperwork, promised I wouldn't sexually harass anyone, and got my discount card. Who knows what life in the retail world over the holiday season will bring, but it'll beat sitting at home waiting for substitute jobs that aren't coming.

Moving Forward

The election is over, and George W. Bush received a majority of popular and electoral votes. We can either spend the next four years baying for blood, or we can try to put the divisiveness of the campaigns behind us. I'm not going to spend another post going into why I support him - you know why, and nothing you can say will change my mind about it. Likewise, nothing I say will change your opinions.

In the last few posts and their subsequent comments, tempers raged and flared. I lashed out at the assumption made by many people around me that the only possible explanation for my views is a lack of information, implying that I just wasn't enlightened enough to agree with them. Never did it cross their minds that it took four long years of introspection and analysis to develop my political ideology.

I took cheap shots at the liberals during the campaign, and I had even more cheap shots taken at me. I sincerely hope that now that the campaigns are over, rational thought will replace the primal mudslinging that has characterized the political discussions of the last few months. I think you may have some ideas worth hearing, but I'm not going to listen when you preface it by calling me a war-mongering ideologue.

I don't want to have to spend every post replying to 6 comments worth of the same rhetoric. The Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith trailer is going live online any minute now, and I want to be able to talk about that instead.

First Things First

1. With 98% of Ohio results reporting in, Kerry and everyone else last night knew that there were not enough outstanding votes to take the lead back from Bush. Edwards was the one who kept pushing to never give up until every vote had been counted, come Hell or high water.

2. After being surrounded by them for 5 years, I can say that most lawyers are, actually, evil. If you're ever in doubt, just talk to someone hoping to go to U of M's Law School. Kerry and Edwards had their private jets with "legal SWAT teams" ready to go challenge every vote in the nation. That's what I call a lot of lawyers.

3. Yes, right now the nation is divided on all of the hot issues that marked this campaign. In both Kerry's concession speech and Bush's acceptance speech, they addressed their concerns over the bipartisan polarity that exists and both made the first statements toward bringing both sides back together. Just like Reagan did in 1984 and Clinton did in 1996, I think Bush's second term will make great efforts to reconcile the harsh division of the government and the nation. What doesn't help is people like John Edwards, who in his introduction of Kerry this afternoon went out of his way to enumerate the causes of division in the nation, and even describe the situation as "Two Americas". It's this sort of rabid hatred of the administration by the ultra liberal left and sanctimoniousness of the far right that need to be purged for us to move forward.

4. Loss of privacy? You can't decry the homeland security measures of the administration one minute and demand complete immunity from all searches and seizures the next. I've not lost any of my privacy, and I'm guessing none of you have either. If you're not doing something illegal, you shouldn't have to worry about someone getting a warrant against you. If the FBI, NSA, CIA, ATF, and other agencies whose job it is to ensure national security have to answer to the media for every operation they conduct then they have no ability to do their job. Despite all the rampant conspiracy theorists out there, we are not going to have Marshall law, or a loss of civil liberties under this administration or any other.

5. Lies and deception? You're right, I'm sorry, every other person in a position of authority throughout human history is completely honest and blame free except for those in the Bush administration. Did the President make decisions based on intelligence reports that were completely infallible? No, he saw the same intelligence reports that Clinton had seen, that Al Gore would have seen, and he made his decision based on the best information available. If that information was not reliable, then whoever provided it should be held accountable. OH WAIT, he was! George Tenet resigned as director of the CIA.

6. Government sponsored religion? We were, and still are, a Nation under God. Whether people like it or not, we are a faith-based nation. This is not to say we are a theocracy by any means, but we are undeniably a nation whose religion is consistently front and center in our lives. Whoa, did I miss the creation of the First Church of the United States? Did we add a cross to our flag when I wasn't looking? Sure, it says "In God we Trust" on our money. But it doesn't say a Nation under one God. We are a Nation under Jehovah, The Holy Trinity, God of Abraham, Allah, and dozens of other names that we each give to God. Nobody ever said which god you had to believe in, or even that you believe in anything. But you're right, we should totally abandon all churches and other agencies with religious affiliation and forbid them from carrying out charitable works and welfare. Instead of helping out those local institutions who know the disadvantaged in their communities, we should create massive federal help centers paid for by magical funding, not middle class tax hikes.

Give it up Jackass!

Kerry, you sniveling weasel, concede to the fact that you've lost Ohio. Even if 90% of the provisional ballots are for you, it's not enough to reverse The President's lead. Edwards gave his little Howard Dean-esque rallying cry in Boston, and the masses were promptly told to go home. The only support you and the Democratic Party has is from the bourgeois lawyers in the Northeast, so I don't know what else you're still expecting. Go drown your sorrows in a bottle of ketchup.

Kerry claims to care only about ensuring the democratic process for everyone in the country, regardless of what the outcome is. And, in true fashion, after saying this last week he'll call out his army of lawyers just like his running mate to litigate this nation within an inch of its life this week.

Well, it's 3:30 in the morning, and since I'm not working tomorrow I might as well stay up to see what happens in the Reagan Building. Bush is waiting for one more state to be called before making a speech, and since he's clearly ahead in Iowa, Nevada, and New Mexico I don't think it will be a problem.