On Reflections of the Non-Harp Variety

In which we look to the future by considering the past.


This week at community dinner none of us¹ were feeling particularly motivated to lead any post dinner activities. Luckily for us one of our good friends, Rob, came to the rescue. He led us through an activity designed to help us reflect on the upcoming year, I thought it was pretty awesome and I figured would immortalize my reflections on Ye Olde Internet.

Rob started the activity by having us sit in silence for a few moments. He then read out a primer, "I hope..." for example. I don't know what others in the room did, but I challenged myself to not over think things and simply just write the first thing that came to mind. For the purposes of this blog I am going to write each prompt and then hide my response in a spoiler, additional thoughts will be in italics. My reason for doing this is simple, I want this to be a participatory blog post. When you read each write down (or at least think about) how you would respond². Okay, here we go.

I hope...

for a new job, and a new relationship.

My search for a permanent job has been going on far too long, it would be swell if someone hired me. Hopefully, I'll get some good news this week. The other thing is simply that I am 30, I'd be great to be in a relationship with someone. Maybe get married eventually.

I'm afraid...

of being stagnant.

When things get overwhelming I tend to just shut down³, this year I want to push myself to not let that happen.

I will...

push myself (to write more, to sell myself harder to employers).

I've been missing writing lately, and would like to get back in the habit of blogging more often, or just writing in general. I'm going to start shooting for once a week again. Also, during any interviews I might have I am going to attempt to put my humility aside and let any potential employers know that I am the ultimate badass.

I will not...

allow uncertainty to cripple my relationships.

Not knowing what I was doing with work was giving me an excuse not to fully invest in the people around me (community, small group, etc.) and I knew it had to stop. This is something I've been better about of late, but I want to keep working on it.

I will start...

to value myself more but to work to improve myself at the same time.

You'll start to see a number of these tie together, I was alright with that. An improved self-confidence is important for most people, part of that comes from excepting yourself for who you are and part of it comes form working to make yourself better.

I will stop...

driving so much; relying on myself as much.

I need to ride my bike more and I need to be praying more. Josiah⁴ and I had a conversation a few weeks ago, and I mentioned that with life it is totally acceptable to work and try and strive for the things we want with everything we have in us, but that we also need to be praying and giving our stuff to God. I need to follow my own advice.

I want...

to feel a renewed sense of purpose.

Which is not to say I need a new purpose, but sometimes that is a part of it.

I need...

the support of others.

Tied to some of the other things on this list. I need to turn to my friends, my family and my community more.

I can...

overcome my faults and self doubts.

Pretty straight forward and a culmination of many of the other things on this list.

So there you have it. I truly hope you thought about these things for yourself. If you didn't it's not to late, go for it.

PS if you are wondering about the title of this particular post just google "Harp Reflections" and be both illuminated and horrified.
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¹ Carrie, Guff, Will, Colleen, Josiah and I (Tim was playing make believe in Indy).
² Of course, if you don't I'll never know. But Jesus will.
³ Ask Sarah Street, ultimate Enneagram nerd, why.
⁴ aka: Joshua, Josie, Blingfoot

On DIY Christmas Cards and Peaking

In which artistic peaks are reached, Christmas cheer is spread, and a return most triumphant


Annnnnnd we're back, after nearly a six month hiatus due to blogging hubris once again striking¹. As well as severe writer's block.

Quick life update: still job searching, working a local middle school in a study hall, not blogging. There, caught up.

At my job I try to find different activities to keep my students entertained, which can be difficult at times. I use daily brain teasers, word searches, crossword puzzles, I have even had them find and copy words out of the dictionary. Anything to get them to keep their mouths shut. One such attempt involved searching for printable mazes online, difficult ones. Easy mazes simply mean more paper on my floor². My Google search³ eventually let me to this maze:

It's about as intense as it looks, though not as intense as some others I found, and have really only had a handful of kids seriously attempt it. One of the perks of my job is that it is pretty mindless, as long as my kids are working quietly and not acting like total jackasses there isn't much for me to do. So I decided to attempt the maze. But instead of just picking a path and seeing where it led I decided to black out all the dead ends and reveal the path that way. Did it take a while? Yes. Was I concerned I would make a mistake and ruin hours of work? Yes. But away I went.

As I made my way around the maze I realized that I really like the way it looked. It had a minimalist look that I found fascinating, and it seemed like such a shame to take all the time to fill it in and then simply throw it way. So I began to think of what I could possible do with it, then it hit me, Christmas cards, more importantly DIY Christmas cards (that's "Do It Yourself" for the uninitiated in the crowd). I figured I could white out the words in the start and finish bubbles and draw little Christmas scenes and send them out. Then I took it a little further and decided to draw little before and after pictures in each so that if you followed the maze you would get to the next scene. Lastly I glued them down some red card stock and wrote some messages on the back. It was all pretty easy, now I just need to figure out how to mail them⁴.

The Grey Menace Strikes

A Classic Christmas Conundrum

This was the original card, which is why the pictures flow the opposite direction⁵.

This is probably my favorite card, I gave it to Abe Corry.

Snowball fight!!

#snowday

You can't go wrong with the triangle tree.

I also like this one. Baby Jesus has the darkest skin, scandalous.

This is it, I've peaked artistically. At least it has been immortalized on the internets.

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¹ Every time I talk about what my next blog post will be about it doesn't get written.

² In the form of: wads, footballs, airplanes, notes, shreds, and, once, a swan.

³ Literally "difficult printable mazes" or "impossible printable mazes"

⁴ It turns out it is easier and cheaper just to make some 6.5x9.5 envelopes myself, I hope they make it through the mail okay.

⁵ Also, because it getting sent to the southern hemisphere. Okay, that's a lie.

On Reviews of Summer Flicks, Part I

In which the author eases back into the swing of things and brings the reader along for the ride.


Blogging has not been coming easily to me lately, which I don't really like. I would really like to push myself to write more, but it hasn't been happening. Hopefully I can use this post to get back in the swing of things, we will see how it goes.

I've talked about summer movies before. If you didn't read it last year, or you don't like clicking links, I can catch you up. There are lots of movies in the summer, some are good, most are not so much good.

Pretty simple premise right?

This summer, for me, has been a little different than most. Don't worry, I'm still job searching so it isn't that different. But I have seen more movies in the theater than I normally do. So I thought I'd review them for you.

Thor- This movie marked the official start of the summer movie season. It also marked the start of a cavalcade of summer comic movies¹. When I first heard about this movie I wasn't that interested. I never knew much about Thor other than the fact that he had hammer with a weird name (Mjölnir) and that he was a Norse god sent to Earth who became a superhero. This would mean the movie would have to balance scenes on Earth with scenes in Asgard, what director can manage that?

Which brings us my interest in the film. It started when I heard that Kenneth Branaugh would be directing, he is best known for directing in several movies based on Shakespeare's plays. It seemed to me that someone with a grasp of Shakespeare may be able to handle the balance. Seeing the trailers locked me in so I went to see it one afternoon.

What worked: Branaugh found a good pace for the movie, it never seemed to drag and did manage a balance between the supernatural and the superhero. Chris Hemsworth was great as Thor, he looked the part, and had the smarmy, egotistical thing down. The connection to the larger movie world that will be found in The Avengers next summer was much smoother than in Iron Man 2. Idris Elba (aka Stringer Bell), always Idris Elba.

What was best: Tom Hiddleston's turn as Loki was incredible. A movie like this is only as good as it's villain and this was a great villain.

What could have been better: Natalie Portman was just kind of hanging around and the love story felt forced. Thor's running crew were talked up as bad asses, and had the look, but didn't do much.

Overall: I really enjoyed this movie. It was a lot of fun, it had action and an appropriate amount of cheesy comedy you'd expect for a comic movie. Totally worth checking out. Also, I finally learned how to pronounce  Mjölnir.

X-Men: First Class - I have a conflicted history with X-Men movies. I grew up reading X-Men and watching the cartoon, I thought the first movie was great and the second is, in my opinion, one of the best comic book movies ever made. The third one was a frustrating mess the felt like a cheap cash grab by Fox², and Wolverine was one of the worst movies I've seen. So to say that I was worried when I heard that Fox was making a prequel/reboot of the X-Men franchise is an understatement. As a result I didn't pay much attention. Until, once again, the attached director was announced.

Matthew Vaughn, director of Stardust and Kick-Ass, has earned a lot of credit with me which meant my apprehension was lessened. However, I was still concerned with Fox's history of interfering with filming and a short production schedule (10 months as opposed to Thor's 15). Which lasted until I saw the first official trailer, which blew me away. It seemed to have all the heart of the first two movies and the actors all looked and sounded great. To say I was excited going into the screening was an understatement, this had quickly one of the movies I was most looking forward to.

What worked: A lot of things, really. There was a lot happening in the movie but it never felt overly long, it was able to move a quick clip and hold your attention. Kevin Bacon was fantastic in his role as the villain Sebastian Shaw. The kids in the movie did a good job for the screen time they had. The visuals were fantastic, the movie takes place in the 60's and Vaughn was able to make that seem real with the costume choices and set decorations. An unexpected scene in the middle of the movie that I don't want to ruin but worked on every level.

What worked best: James McAvoy as Professor X and Michael Fassbender as Magneto were incredible. Most people agree that Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan were perfectly cast in the first three movies. McAvoy and Fassbender were able to match these performances while making the roles their own. Watching these characters interact with one another was worth the price of admission alone.

What could have been better: This story is ultimately about Xavier and Magneto, so take this with a grain of salt, but most of the support characters were underutilized, especially the villains (but a least they got away from the generic jumping super power found all over X-Men 3). January Jones did not impress me as Emma Frost. Only one black character. I'm pretty much over Mystique as a character, I don't know why these film makers keep going back to this character, there are way more interesting females out there to bring into these movies.

Overall: It's still pretty early in the summer, but so far this is the movie to beat for me. It was incredible, I loved every minute of it, even with the issues that I mentioned before. There are one or two other movies this summer that may surpass X-Men: First Class, but they will have to be pretty amazing.

Super 8 - I was all about the marketing for this flick. Movie trailers these days show way too much of the films they are advertising, Super 8 did not have this problem. It left a lot of the film to be discovered. Also, J.J. Abrams, the director, did a great job with Mission Impossible 3 and Star Trek, so that was a positive. I wasn't sure if I was going to see this in the theaters or not, but my mom was in town and we had talked about going to see a movie and I thought this would be a good one.

What worked: The kids. The kids were amazing in this film, they were funny and felt like real kids, not old people pretending to be kids. The story at the heart of the movie, it was moving and well done, it would have worked even without all the other mystery/monster type stuff. The setting and costumes, the movie is set in 1980 and the set design and costume really made that feel real.

What worked best: Joel Courtney and Elle Fanning, the two main characters. They were totally amazing.

What could of been better: Umm....less lens flairs please. The dad character either needed to be in the movie more or in it less, he just kind of floated. This is going to sound weird but there needed to be less of the monster, the movie worked at it's best when it was just the kids and their story or people reacting to weirdness going on around them. The times you see the monster, especially early on, felt unnecessary and, I think, would have heightened the tension if you just saw the outcome of those scenes.

Overall: A very fun movie, that, as promised, managed to feel like an early eighties Amblin Entertainment movie. Worth checking out for sure, but don't feel like you will miss anything by waiting for DVD.

What other movies will I see in theaters? Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, Captain America, and Attack the Block³. Movies I am interested in seeing but will weight to hear some initial reviewing: Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Cowboys & Aliens. What can you expect to read about next week⁴? It will be a blast from the past.
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¹ Thor, X-Men, Green Lantern, Transformers, Captain America, Cowboys & Aliens, Conan the Barbarian.
² X-Men: The Last Stand was rushed into production when Bryan Singer chose to direct Superman Returns and was given a very short production schedule to beat Singer's Superman to theaters. Additionally, Fox executives may have been very insistent on making changes to the film (such as killing off Cyclops since James Marsden was also going to be in Superman).
³ Assuming it releases near here, I would probably drive to Indy to watch it.
⁴ Seriously, I will write a new post next week.

On Vitae

In which a list of things done is given.

I've had some writer's block lately so I asked people on Facebook what I should blog about. There were some good ideas that I will likely come back to. But my friend Jace wanted to know all the things I've done to earn money. That seemed like a good idea, and will force me to think about it. So in roughly chronological order here are all the things I've done to earn money.

• Ran the scoreboard at little league softball games.
• Started a company selling jumper cables¹.
• Score keeping and video taping middle school and high school sporting events.
• Served food.
• Mowed lawns.
• Framed houses.
• Surfed the Internet².
• Set up painting jobs on the Navajo reservation.
• Played Sorry and dodge ball.
• Went on field trips, swam, played games.
• Planned games for Camp O.
• Planned games for VBS.
• Interned at church.
• Edited video³.
• Young Lifed.
• Installed furniture on military bases and hotels.
• Substitute taught.
• Sold plasma.
• House sat⁴.
• Moved hay bails.
• Walked back and forth IU's campus⁵.
• Read books and blogged⁶.
• Counseled students.
• Watched gym class.
• Fed kids lunch.
• Sold meat at the farmers' market.
• Got really cold⁷.

Now, for a fun game see if you can figure out where these jobs fall on a timeline (Junior High/High School/College/Grad School). For an extra challenge don't read the food notes.

Next week: How not to be a dingus.
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¹ In middle school my friend Eric and I were a part of Junior Achievement, I don't know why we decided to do that, probably because we heard we could get money. I still have the jumper cables our group made.
² My freshman year the was some company that would track your Internet surfing and would pay you based on how much you surfed the Internet. My roommate and I would each get checks every couple of weeks for like $20.
³ I made the video for Camp Olivet in 2004, I had no idea what I was doing and stayed up until like 3 am to finish it.
⁴ House sitting for the Jones was the most amazing summer job ever. One of the top 3 summers of my life.
⁵ Working for the Upward Bound summer program was one of the most ridiculous experiences of my life, I would seriously just sit in a hallway while kids took classes.
⁶ As the in-school aide at JCMS I read like 12 books in a semester.
⁷ I work at the Corry's freeze loading coolers and CSA bags.

On Thirty For Thirty

In which we reflect back upon lessons learned.

I turned thirty at the end of March. Over the last three decades (ugh) I've learned a lot of things. Here are thirty things I've learned¹.

1. Most things in life that we worry about aren't worth worrying about.
2. Sometimes the things you are good at are not the things you thought you would be good at.
3. Don't grab a ring stand that has been been under a Bunsen burner for 30 minutes.
4. Always bet on black².
5. 
6. My parents really did know what they were talking about.
7. Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start³.
8. I regret more the things I didn't do, or say, than those I did.
9. When a majority of your friends tell you something is a bad idea, it is.
10. How to play the guitar.
11. It's way too easy to let friends slip away.
12. My sister and I spent too much time not liking each other.
13. I should have thought through this list before I started it.
14. That you need to diversify your resources or you will be unable to build anything.
15. I'm no good at talking on the phone.
16. What timshel means.
17. How to do a mail merge to make address labels on Word.
18. How to draw this guy.
    
19. How to drive a manual transmission car.
20. Food you cook yourself almost always test better.
21. The journey is more important that the destination, but you should have a destination in mind.
22. I don't give myself enough credit.
23. How to write in cursive, twice⁴.
24. The twists to a bunch of movies I've never seen⁵.
25. I'm a nine, probably with an eight wing.
26. The states in alphabetical order.
27. That I'm really good at the Kevin Bacon game.
28. Why the chicken crossed the road.
29. That I don't know nearly as much as I think I do.
30. I really enjoy writing.

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¹ In no particular order.

² Thank you Wesley Snipes.

³ Boom. Thirty lives.

⁴ I re-taught myself in grad school.

⁵ e.g. what soylent green is.

On the Numbers Game

In which a story is told and ranting occurs.


It's been a while since I've blogged, which has more to do with a lack of motivation than a lack of ideas¹. I'm actually working on a different blog post that I will hopefully get back to but conversations that I've had of late have led my mind in a different direction.

Those conversations have been about education.

They have not been encouraging.

Wednesday, right before I left work, I sat down and talked to the guidance counselor at the school that I work at. We started talking about students and how frustrating it can be to work with them at times. Nothing we said was really that shocking, it was more just about venting about the fact that those students who are farthest behind and most at risk of dropping out are in that position, not because of a lack of intelligence, but due to a lack of motivation. Most of them just don't care about school. Like I said, this wasn't new information, ask any educator and they will tell you the same thing, unmotivated students are terrible to work with. As we were talking the topic shifted slightly to a conversation that she had with our principal, and this is when things took a turn.

The counselor told me about a school, here in Indiana, that has a 97% graduation rate². This is an incredible rate, an unbelievable rate, especially when you consider the fact that this school is in a small rural community. Schools like that normally have trouble keeping students enrolled for the entire four years of high school. The fact that this school would have one of the best graduation rates in the state was...unreal. In fact, it was just that, not real. This school had found a loophole, for a lack of a better word, that allowed them to keep there graduation rate high.

If there was a student who was not going to graduate on time, or that didn't care about school any more, a meeting would be called. The counselor at this school would bring in the student and a parent and would hand them a form. This form is a withdraw to home schooling form, essentially a legal document that says the parent or guardian will be providing educational services for their child. Once this form is signed the student is no longer a drop out, instead they are a transfer, and no longer the responsibility of the school. The school keeps its high rate of graduation.

At first I couldn't believe it. But then, the more I thought about it the more I realized that I absolutely believed it. Here is the honest truth: education isn't about education anymore. We³ don't care if students receive a well rounded education that prepares them for life on their own, or for continued education after high school. We care about two things: standardized test scores and graduation rates. That's it, that's what it boils down to. How do you know if a school is going well? Well they have great test scores and a high graduation rate. So it should come to no surprise that schools look for ways to help themselves look better. It's just one big numbers game and everybody plays.

I've recently been watching The Wire, which was a show on HBO from 2002-2008. The show follows a group of police and a group of drug dealers in Baltimore, it is one of the best televisions shows I've ever seen. As I was watching the fourth season a couple of weeks ago there was one scene in particular that hit close to home. I've put the dialog from the scene below in a spoiler tag, just click the link and the words will appear. It doesn't give much away, but if you want to avoid everything you can.

Spoiler Alert

ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL: So for the time being, all teachers will devote class time to teaching language arts sample questions. Now if you turn to page eleven, please, I have some things I want to go over with you.
ROLAND: I don’t get it, all this so we score higher on the state tests? If we’re teaching the kids the test questions, what is it assessing in them?
TEACHER: Nothing, it assesses us. The test scores go up, they can say the schools are improving. The scores stay down, they can’t.
ROLAND: Juking the stats.
TEACHER: Excuse me?
ROLAND: Making robberies into larcenies, making rapes disappear. You juke the stats, and major become colonels. I’ve been here before.
TEACHER: Wherever you go, there you are.

A big part of the police story line in The Wire is the department's never ending battle with crime statistics. Often the officers will change how they write up a crime, making them less serious, so they can say the felony rate dropped. They "juke" the stats. And it is no different in the educational world, that is exactly what this school was doing⁴. At first I was furious that they would do that to their students. As time went on I realized what I was really upset about was that we operate in a system that would make schools feel like that was something they had to do.

This is a very dangerous time of our educational system. Programs like "No Child Left Behind" and "Race to the Top" (don't let anyone fool you they are basically the same) force schools to focus on benchmarks based around standardized tests. But anyone that works with kids can tell you there is no standard, not for how kids learn, not for their social contexts, not for their life experiences. We teach kids to be individuals then test them in a way that is anything but. Add to all this the fact that money may be taken from public education and given to charter schools with little to no oversight, who, if they wanted to, could turn away students who are a risk not to graduate, or even to get high marks. And that doesn't even factor in merit based pay for teachers.

Imagine that you are an English teacher. You've got a family at home you need to support and your pay is based on how well your students do on a test. As the year goes on you come up with a new way to instruct your students that seems to be helping the majority of them prepare. Do you share that discovery with your fellow English teachers, knowing that if they classes do better than yours they will get paid more and you won't? And what about those three kids that you just can't seem too reach? Maybe you stop in at the guidance office and ask the counselor about getting them to withdraw to home schooling so they don't bring down the class, and school. average on the test.

I don't have any answers for these problems. I know that there are things that need to be fixed at schools. I know that there are teachers who probably need to be fired and that unions need to make some changes. But I also know that there are parents that need to do their job and help teach there kids. I know there are kids who need to pull their heads out of their asses and put forth some effort. I know that there are politicians who need to shut the hell up. And more than anything I know that the programs we have now, and the direction that we seem to be moving in, will only lead to disaster. If we don't do something soon it may be too late.

It's just one big numbers game and everybody loses.
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¹ Although the ideas haven't been flowing much lately.
² The graduation rate is determined by looking at how many students enter as ninth graders and then graduate as seniors.
³ This would be the collective, societal we.
⁴ This school sadly isn't the only one that does this, I've heard of other who have "clearing house days" where they pull in any sophomore or older who isn't on track to graduate and do the same thing. And this is at a large suburban school.

On Messing With Your Childhood

In which a uniting component of humanity is discussed and your perspectives are altered.

Imagine, if you will, you are sitting in a movie theater. You've got friends on either side of you and you are killing time answering the same easy trivia question for the tenth time. Finally the lights dim, your excitement rises a little, but no, it's just a coke commercial. Or some voice telling you to silence your cell phone. But then it happens. This screen pops up:

Oh yeah, it's preview time, the best part of the movies. What will it be? A super-rad blockbuster? A cheeseball romcom¹? Emotional Oscar bait? A terrible and lame teen vampire movie? You never know. You are on the edge of your seat as everything about a movie is distilled down into a scant 2-3 minutes. When it ends you lean over and whisper to your friend, "that looks awesome" or "that looks terrible" before the green screen is there again and it all starts over.

Movie trailers are a funny thing. They are, at their core, commercials. I hate commercials, but I love trailers. Well, that's not exactly right. I love trailers in the movie theater, when they are up on the big screen. And I love catching sweet trailers when they first drop. But I always skip them on DVDs. I don't really know why, maybe it's the mystery of it all. But no matter their context they are definitely an attempt to sell you on spending your hard earned dollars² on a movie.

Because of this they are often put together by people in charge of selling the movie rather than people who make the movie. This can lead to movies that don't end quite as awesome as the trailer would have you believe. At times the trailers simply give away too much³ of the story. And often the movie is completely misrepresented. What is wild is to think about how easy it is to completely manipulate the audience with some simple text and a sweet soundtrack. It makes you wonder if you could completely change the tone of a film?

Oh wait, someone already did that. Back in 2006 someone reedited a trailer for Mary Poppins, added new music and sound effects and came up with Scary Mary. Check it out⁴.


Other videos soon followed. Such as a re-cut Charlie and the Chocolate Factory trailer. Although, let's be honest, that movie was damn creepy on it's own, that tunnel scene? Come on.


But I think my favorite remixed trailer is probably this one, which I will leave you without any set up.


It pretty crazy how easy it is to make a trailer look absolutely nothing like the movie. Keep that in mind the next time you see a movie you are totally jazzed for, because you might be in for a surprise. Except if it's a Twilight preview, the actual movie will be just as sucky as the trailer.
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¹ That would be a romantic comedy.
² Or your parents if you are still in high school/home for Christmas.
³ My apologies for linking to VH1.
⁴ Hey Carrie and Tara, suck it up and watch the dang videos this time.