Sunday, March 27, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
no title, just thoughts here
What teacher stays up past midnight?
Me. Grading papers. Woe is I.
Anywho, teacherisms aside, I think I'm still Laurissa.
And maybe I'll be coming to a town near you in the future...preferrably between the months of June and July.
Later gaters.
Me. Grading papers. Woe is I.
Anywho, teacherisms aside, I think I'm still Laurissa.
And maybe I'll be coming to a town near you in the future...preferrably between the months of June and July.
Later gaters.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Slam poetry
I challenged my students to write a slam poem. So I wrote one, too:
Word Stealers
To the spacey story lovers who find more importance in a single word than in a lifetime of talking.
I am you.
Or maybe I want to be you.
Today we say too much, we ramble on and on and on and on
And we can't keep a story straight to save our lives. Yada yada, he said she said.
Celebrities fought, critics cried, politicians pleaded
I'm up to my head in all the world's talk.
Leaders and politicians are still saying more
Because their "Ladies and gentlemen"
and "To whom it may concern" and their
"we'll make it better" tributes
are believed to turn tides. But come on, guys. You're talking too much.
You're consuming all the words.
And the heartless, made-up, done-up, congenial,
perfect white smiles on the 5 O'Clock news,
it's your cheesy grin,
your latest jokes and a not a second later, you take more cues
to speak about death and riots and your hair hasn't even moved
much less tears ensued. And don't you care? There goes Uganda. There goes Egypt.
Oh, that's right.
You're a projector.
The senseless chatter, the subjects that don't matter,
"Oh and God," I pray. "Please be with us in this day.
And bless this day, and bless her and him and the grass, the leaves. And Lord, cure the hangnail on my finger...wa. wa. wa. wa"
No better than Charlie Brown's teacher. And I wonder: "Is God ever telling us
to just be quiet?"
Just shhhhhh
think
Maybe it scares us, the silence.
Because we can't control the silence but we can control the noise
And now I remember. It's in First Kings, nineteen.
God says: "Go out and wait for me" and so we do
we stand on the mountain, and a great gusting wind blows us half away down
and shatters a mountain. "It's God! It's God!" we cry,
but he is not in the wind
Then an earthquake. I can see it. We're all yelling at the top of our lungs,
and it shakes us to and fro, and surely this is God with all his gusto.
But he is not in the earthquake.
A fire blazes, and our pyromaniac faces glow in the phases
of read and white and hot, fiery oranges. "It's God! Surely it's him!" and we're sure
He'll show up with a robe aflame.
But he's not in the fire.
Then a whisper. Hush.
I
said
a whisper.
Shhhh.
Be quiet Ron Swanson. Shut your face, Obama. You dutiful prayers. Not even you are worthy.
Quit believing God is in all our raccous noises. Stop rambling. Stop.
It's time we listened.
Word Stealers
To the spacey story lovers who find more importance in a single word than in a lifetime of talking.
I am you.
Or maybe I want to be you.
Today we say too much, we ramble on and on and on and on
And we can't keep a story straight to save our lives. Yada yada, he said she said.
Celebrities fought, critics cried, politicians pleaded
I'm up to my head in all the world's talk.
Leaders and politicians are still saying more
Because their "Ladies and gentlemen"
and "To whom it may concern" and their
"we'll make it better" tributes
are believed to turn tides. But come on, guys. You're talking too much.
You're consuming all the words.
And the heartless, made-up, done-up, congenial,
perfect white smiles on the 5 O'Clock news,
it's your cheesy grin,
your latest jokes and a not a second later, you take more cues
to speak about death and riots and your hair hasn't even moved
much less tears ensued. And don't you care? There goes Uganda. There goes Egypt.
Oh, that's right.
You're a projector.
The senseless chatter, the subjects that don't matter,
"Oh and God," I pray. "Please be with us in this day.
And bless this day, and bless her and him and the grass, the leaves. And Lord, cure the hangnail on my finger...wa. wa. wa. wa"
No better than Charlie Brown's teacher. And I wonder: "Is God ever telling us
to just be quiet?"
Just shhhhhh
think
Maybe it scares us, the silence.
Because we can't control the silence but we can control the noise
And now I remember. It's in First Kings, nineteen.
God says: "Go out and wait for me" and so we do
we stand on the mountain, and a great gusting wind blows us half away down
and shatters a mountain. "It's God! It's God!" we cry,
but he is not in the wind
Then an earthquake. I can see it. We're all yelling at the top of our lungs,
and it shakes us to and fro, and surely this is God with all his gusto.
But he is not in the earthquake.
A fire blazes, and our pyromaniac faces glow in the phases
of read and white and hot, fiery oranges. "It's God! Surely it's him!" and we're sure
He'll show up with a robe aflame.
But he's not in the fire.
Then a whisper. Hush.
I
said
a whisper.
Shhhh.
Be quiet Ron Swanson. Shut your face, Obama. You dutiful prayers. Not even you are worthy.
Quit believing God is in all our raccous noises. Stop rambling. Stop.
It's time we listened.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Ning
Have I told you I love the Ning?
Because I do.
And this love will probably continue on forever.
So yeah.
The Ning and I will walk
Hand in hand
Throughout the rest of my teaching career.
Because I do.
And this love will probably continue on forever.
So yeah.
The Ning and I will walk
Hand in hand
Throughout the rest of my teaching career.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Tipsified
If Brad Paisley hadn't already paid a mocking tribute to the subject, I'd have done it now. Imagine prohibitionists having their way with America today. "You can't drink." Oh, ok. That means that beer fests and fairs and sports depots and Nascar and hockey and football and I think baseball (but that's more geared to the use of cigars) and breathalizers and Budweiser horses and vineyards and Lidnsay Lohan as we now know her...all of if it...would be out of business.
Drinking starts with a phrase like this: "It's been a terrible week. I could use a drink." (I think) So a few friends who agree say the same, and wala, you have a party. (yes?)
Maybe I need to give you a history of my experience with the subject matter for you to truly understand my aloofness.
Age 7: I stayed at a friend's house, her dad had just opened a beer can and left the kitchen. "Do you want a sip?" "Ok." I took a sip and immediately spit it out. Who would make a drink that tases so bitter and disgusting when there are amazing drinks like JuicyJuice in the world?
Age 9: "You want to be in our gang? But to join you have to smoke one whole cigarette, drink three swallows of beer, and ride the train across town." I thought about the stakes for a moment, but I remembered not liking beer, and I envisioned myself tripping under the train somehow and getting a limb sliced off, and I had asthma, so the cigarette would probably have sent me to the hospital. No, I would not join my brother's friend group. I felt so guilty about having been asked to be in a gang that I told Mom that afternoon. That tattle-tale moment guaranteed that no gang in a five mile radius would ask me to join.
Age 12: "You want some fizzy juice?" Ashley was stepping on a stool, feeling around in a cupboard higher than her eye level. "It's really, really, really good." "Ok," I said. Ashley had found one fizzy juice bottle. She cut the paper around the seal, twisted the cap off, and said, "Yeah. This is my favorite stuff. It's better than apple juice." She took a swallow. "Want some?" I was about to swallow some when her mom got home from work. "That's not yours! Ashley!" And then I had to go home.
Age 14: "I say we just do it." By this age I was fully aware of what many alcohol substances looked like. We were standing in her parents' garage. "Maybe if we put it in sippy cups," she said. "Oh yeah. They'll never suspect anything if we're drinking out of sippy cups," I said. She twisted the bottle around in her hands. "I drink out of sippy cups all the time." After about two more minutes of deliberation we decided that we would make a blended coffee frappe instead. And we did. And it was delicious. And we drank it while we watched re-runs of Lizzy McGuire.
Ages15-18: High school. "Do you want to go to a party?"
"Of course."
"Do you know anyone who is having one?"
"I thought you did."
"No, I just wanted to go, and I thought maybe you knew of someone."
"No."
"Hmmm. Want to come over and watch Friends?"
"Of course."
I'm going to debunk the myth of peer pressure right now. Most kids don't get in your face like the commercials and DARE videos say. I have personally never seen kids circling around me with cigarettes and drugs and alcohol saying, "Do it. Come on. You're only cool if you do it. Come on. Come on. You know you want it." I guess Stevie from the gang could fit the category. But I like to think that any rational human being, age 9 or 20, knows how to have a conscience and say no.
Age 19 and 20: Mmmmm. Nope.
Age 21: I was serving as a counselor in Alaska the day I turned 21. "You going on a booze cruise?" asked another counselor. "I don't think there's alcohol for fifty miles around the camp. But," I held up a handmade card from one of my campers, "I'm going to get drunk off of love from my campers." My co-counselor shook his head, and for the rest of summer the subject was dropped.
When I flew home at the end of summer, before going back to college, Grandpa asked if I'd had anything yet. "Besides one sip of beer in first grade...no." We were at Applebees. "She'll have a Strawberry Daquiri." The waiter winked at me and left. Suddenly I felt like I was in a whole new club. The over 21 and I legally drink club. "Mom and Dad should really be worried about me," and Grandpa laughed.
College after 21: Dordt's policy is no alcohol on campus. My roommates and I were sitting around the table talking about Dordt's alcoholic sub-culture, a taboo subject, really. I'd heard of many Doc's dances and many, many miniature refrigerators stocked with drinks. We lived in the most run-down apartments on campus. They came complete with mold, and they were originally used for temporary housing. That was back in the 70s. "You know, I heard that people used to throw all their beer bottles in the roofs and walls of East Campus. Someone checked once and they said the walls are filled with old bottles." We decided to check it out. "Laurissa, you're the tallest, so you reach through the ceiling and shove this can into the wall." Brilliant. We had all filed to the bathroom, cans in hand. I pushed the can through the ceiling and dropped it in the wall. "Did you hear anything?" "Mmmm. I can't tell." "Put another one in." I pushed another can into the wall, but the same vague sound of a can maaaaybe hitting another can recurred. We decided the only way to tell was to actually look. Two minutes later I was standing with a flashlight, my head poked through the moldy roof, craning my neck over the side of the wall, checking to see if the walls of East Campus Apartments were, indeed, filled with beer bottles accumulating since the '70s.
They weren't.
I saw only the two cans we had dropped. "Well now the myth is kind of true," someone said, and we went back to eating supper.
I cooked with wine on campus once but had to ask the room up one level for a cork screw. Their eyes lighted up and they followed me downstairs. "Oh we thought..."
Yeah. After they left, my roommates and I drank the excess wine with a fruity pop.
After very little experience with alcohol, I must say that I do know a few things. My legs get really warm when I drink wine. Fruity drinks are my favorite. I don't drink beer. My limit is two 8% drinks. It really doesn't take much at all.
A few days ago Tera said, "It's been a terrible week." "It has been for me too," I said. So we drank fuzzy peach navels. They are 32%, and about three drinks (swallows...yeah, three swallows) in we could feel it. Question: Does two 32% drinks mean 64%? (kidding...kind of). Anyway, we were both tired by 9:30. And the evening ended shortly after. Tera's boyfriend James texted and jokingly asked us how the beer pong was. We saw some ping pong balls, and I asked tera if she hand any red cups. We scrambled to set up a mock game of beer pong, took a picture, and sent it to him. He believed us.
This is how I know that drinking really isn't my thing. Who jokingly sets up beer pong and gets more excited by the fact that it looks like beer pong, but doesn't actually play it?
Me.
So what is humanity's fascination with alcohol? A ridiculous question, I know.
I want you to know that right now we're faking a hangover for James's sake, saying that we made Bloody Marys this morning (something I learned from GLEE, yeah, that show where they support teen drinking).
In reality Tera is knitting and I'm writing a blog.
One hour after this blog was posted:
***My alcohol savvy friend Beth just informed me that it would be highly unlikely for us to drink anything with 32% alcohol in it. It's true. We looked back at the labels and they actually said 3.2%. We each had two of those. We are so good at being fake drunk.
Drinking starts with a phrase like this: "It's been a terrible week. I could use a drink." (I think) So a few friends who agree say the same, and wala, you have a party. (yes?)
Maybe I need to give you a history of my experience with the subject matter for you to truly understand my aloofness.
Age 7: I stayed at a friend's house, her dad had just opened a beer can and left the kitchen. "Do you want a sip?" "Ok." I took a sip and immediately spit it out. Who would make a drink that tases so bitter and disgusting when there are amazing drinks like JuicyJuice in the world?
Age 9: "You want to be in our gang? But to join you have to smoke one whole cigarette, drink three swallows of beer, and ride the train across town." I thought about the stakes for a moment, but I remembered not liking beer, and I envisioned myself tripping under the train somehow and getting a limb sliced off, and I had asthma, so the cigarette would probably have sent me to the hospital. No, I would not join my brother's friend group. I felt so guilty about having been asked to be in a gang that I told Mom that afternoon. That tattle-tale moment guaranteed that no gang in a five mile radius would ask me to join.
Age 12: "You want some fizzy juice?" Ashley was stepping on a stool, feeling around in a cupboard higher than her eye level. "It's really, really, really good." "Ok," I said. Ashley had found one fizzy juice bottle. She cut the paper around the seal, twisted the cap off, and said, "Yeah. This is my favorite stuff. It's better than apple juice." She took a swallow. "Want some?" I was about to swallow some when her mom got home from work. "That's not yours! Ashley!" And then I had to go home.
Age 14: "I say we just do it." By this age I was fully aware of what many alcohol substances looked like. We were standing in her parents' garage. "Maybe if we put it in sippy cups," she said. "Oh yeah. They'll never suspect anything if we're drinking out of sippy cups," I said. She twisted the bottle around in her hands. "I drink out of sippy cups all the time." After about two more minutes of deliberation we decided that we would make a blended coffee frappe instead. And we did. And it was delicious. And we drank it while we watched re-runs of Lizzy McGuire.
Ages15-18: High school. "Do you want to go to a party?"
"Of course."
"Do you know anyone who is having one?"
"I thought you did."
"No, I just wanted to go, and I thought maybe you knew of someone."
"No."
"Hmmm. Want to come over and watch Friends?"
"Of course."
I'm going to debunk the myth of peer pressure right now. Most kids don't get in your face like the commercials and DARE videos say. I have personally never seen kids circling around me with cigarettes and drugs and alcohol saying, "Do it. Come on. You're only cool if you do it. Come on. Come on. You know you want it." I guess Stevie from the gang could fit the category. But I like to think that any rational human being, age 9 or 20, knows how to have a conscience and say no.
Age 19 and 20: Mmmmm. Nope.
Age 21: I was serving as a counselor in Alaska the day I turned 21. "You going on a booze cruise?" asked another counselor. "I don't think there's alcohol for fifty miles around the camp. But," I held up a handmade card from one of my campers, "I'm going to get drunk off of love from my campers." My co-counselor shook his head, and for the rest of summer the subject was dropped.
When I flew home at the end of summer, before going back to college, Grandpa asked if I'd had anything yet. "Besides one sip of beer in first grade...no." We were at Applebees. "She'll have a Strawberry Daquiri." The waiter winked at me and left. Suddenly I felt like I was in a whole new club. The over 21 and I legally drink club. "Mom and Dad should really be worried about me," and Grandpa laughed.
College after 21: Dordt's policy is no alcohol on campus. My roommates and I were sitting around the table talking about Dordt's alcoholic sub-culture, a taboo subject, really. I'd heard of many Doc's dances and many, many miniature refrigerators stocked with drinks. We lived in the most run-down apartments on campus. They came complete with mold, and they were originally used for temporary housing. That was back in the 70s. "You know, I heard that people used to throw all their beer bottles in the roofs and walls of East Campus. Someone checked once and they said the walls are filled with old bottles." We decided to check it out. "Laurissa, you're the tallest, so you reach through the ceiling and shove this can into the wall." Brilliant. We had all filed to the bathroom, cans in hand. I pushed the can through the ceiling and dropped it in the wall. "Did you hear anything?" "Mmmm. I can't tell." "Put another one in." I pushed another can into the wall, but the same vague sound of a can maaaaybe hitting another can recurred. We decided the only way to tell was to actually look. Two minutes later I was standing with a flashlight, my head poked through the moldy roof, craning my neck over the side of the wall, checking to see if the walls of East Campus Apartments were, indeed, filled with beer bottles accumulating since the '70s.
They weren't.
I saw only the two cans we had dropped. "Well now the myth is kind of true," someone said, and we went back to eating supper.
I cooked with wine on campus once but had to ask the room up one level for a cork screw. Their eyes lighted up and they followed me downstairs. "Oh we thought..."
Yeah. After they left, my roommates and I drank the excess wine with a fruity pop.
After very little experience with alcohol, I must say that I do know a few things. My legs get really warm when I drink wine. Fruity drinks are my favorite. I don't drink beer. My limit is two 8% drinks. It really doesn't take much at all.
A few days ago Tera said, "It's been a terrible week." "It has been for me too," I said. So we drank fuzzy peach navels. They are 32%, and about three drinks (swallows...yeah, three swallows) in we could feel it. Question: Does two 32% drinks mean 64%? (kidding...kind of). Anyway, we were both tired by 9:30. And the evening ended shortly after. Tera's boyfriend James texted and jokingly asked us how the beer pong was. We saw some ping pong balls, and I asked tera if she hand any red cups. We scrambled to set up a mock game of beer pong, took a picture, and sent it to him. He believed us.
This is how I know that drinking really isn't my thing. Who jokingly sets up beer pong and gets more excited by the fact that it looks like beer pong, but doesn't actually play it?
Me.
So what is humanity's fascination with alcohol? A ridiculous question, I know.
I want you to know that right now we're faking a hangover for James's sake, saying that we made Bloody Marys this morning (something I learned from GLEE, yeah, that show where they support teen drinking).
In reality Tera is knitting and I'm writing a blog.
One hour after this blog was posted:
***My alcohol savvy friend Beth just informed me that it would be highly unlikely for us to drink anything with 32% alcohol in it. It's true. We looked back at the labels and they actually said 3.2%. We each had two of those. We are so good at being fake drunk.
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