The Youth of Today

Sometimes the things that Rob's students write in their art appreciation essays are highly amusing. Today, I was copying the latest batch of paragraphs into a document onto my flash drive so I can grade them on the laptop. Last week's unit was about prints and printmaking, and the question asked about the work of Thomas Kinkade (or, more accurately, the sweatshop of Thomas Kinkade--I've actually met someone once whose life's ambition was to work in his sweatshop). The question asks, are the works offered for sale original prints or reproductions? One of the students' paragraphs began by essentially saying "yes, these works of art are original prints or reproductions."

Yes, the reading comprehension in his classes could be better.

Actually, though, my favorite sentence comes from earlier in the semester, in an essay asking about the Degenerate Art show put on by the Nazis: "Since freedom and rights were limited, people were probably afraid to speak their minds in respect to loosing [sic] their lives and what not." Yes, they probably were. And what not. God, I love that "and what not." It just kills me. In fact, it was a pretty good essay but I couldn't stop laughing about "losing their lives and what not."

I know I shouldn't mock people. But grading these paragraphs can be awfully mind-numbing, especially when there are 60+ of them. I need a little fun now and then.

Okay. Now it's time to make another attempt at writing the story I mentioned in the last post, a sort-of-sci-fi piece for this magazine issue. While swimming laps today I had an idea about how to structure it, and add a conflict (which is key). But I need to make some notes first and also re-read what I wrote last night to make sure it doesn't totally suck.

Turn That Frown Upside Down!

Yeah, I know. I've not been the best at blogging here lately. It occurred to me today that one reason for this is my conflicted feelings about what to post. I feel lame putting up posts like the one below, where I'm all "look at what I did lately." Conversely, I also constantly worry about being a downer. I don't want to continually complain and whine, unless I'm trying to be funny. The other problem is that I usually have these great ideas about blog posts while I'm driving around in the car, and then I forget about them the second I get back into the house. Grr.

It's also hard for me to blog about what I've been doing lately because it's usually pretty boring. Like today, I got up around 8:45. I ate breakfast while playing with Zelda, the kitten (many of my meals are now multitasking events--she's quite insistent and annoying...and fortunately very cute). I checked and answered some e-mail. I went to the gym for about an hour and a half, and did my usual treadmill/machines/swimming combo (not at the same time). I stopped at the store on the way home and picked up some lunch for Rob and I (Tuesday he doesn't teach, but has afternoon meetings). I ate lunch, did a large sinkful of dishes, took a shower. I spent some time reading one of the nominated titles for the Cybils Award in Sci-Fi/Fantasy, another multitasking kitten event. I started writing a new short story, got a few pages in, and had to stop temporarily after realizing I had no idea what the plot is going to be. I worked on some images for our website redesign-in-progress. Oh, and I wasted at least half an hour doing a name-that-tune style music quiz on Facebook.

Actually, that doesn't sound too bad. Today was pretty uneventful--I was taking it easy because I felt run down and blah yesterday and wasn't sure if I was coming down with something. Unfortunately, I also have Art Appreciation essays to grade later this week, a different short story to revise, and some freelance stuff to type up. Plus did I mention we have 40 nominees so far in Sci-Fi/Fantasy to read? Of course, that's the fun part. Read a bunch of YA novels, you say? Yup, that's a no-brainer. I'm trying to decide if I want to--or will be able to--do National Novel Writing Month this year, too. It's coming up. We'll be in Italy for just over a week of November, though, so I'd really have to be on the ball for it. I'm not optimistic about the likelihood of finishing this time, though...

Sllloooooowwwwww.

Apparently it's been a slow blogging week for me. I did, however, put up that nifty widget thingy, also known as a blidget, on the left-hand sidebar, with all the latest posts from the YA blog I contribute to. Speaking of which, I'm also involved in the Cybil Awards (Children's and YA Bloggers' Literary Awards) again this year, this time as an organizer for the Graphic Novels category and a nominating panelist for Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Nominations opened today, so if there are any children's or YA books published this year that you particularly loved, cruise by the Cybils blog and leave your nomination in the comments.

Now for the "I made this! Lookit me!" section...The picture of the bread I baked last week, which I promised to post for DaviMack. It was my first time trying cracked wheat bread--or indeed, any yeast bread other than plain French or plain wheat--and I have to say it went well. It helped that I bought new wheat flour of the King Arthur variety, though I did have some decision-making trouble at the store when I found they had about five different kinds of King Arthur, including organic. However, I went for the all-natural non-organic since the price-to-poundage ratio was much better. And two more loaves are rising even as we speak. Rising slowly, though--is it because of the cracked wheat?

And here's another "lookit what I did" thingy--I'm inordinately proud of my latest poster for the Prospect Theater. I've finally managed to get a little more done on our website, too, specifically adding the footer (which I forgot to do before) and adding the Imp Press page. Once the addition to our house is done, we'll actually be able to get said press up and running again, which will be nice.

In other news...you can now officially pre-order my friend TadMack's book on Amazon now. Whee!....I had a nice long birthday chat with my half-sister in Australia last night (her birthday) and found out something I hadn't heard on U.S. news (big surprise) about the APEC summit...And, last but not least, I seem to be wasting--er, spending an awful lot of time on Facebook lately. Maybe that's why I've been failing to blog. I've been busy playing that stupid Pirates game and throwing sheep at people and what-not.

A Rare Digression into Ethnicity

So I'm making a salad, drinking wine, and watching the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour on Comedy Central, and the Special Guest/Emcee Dean Obeidallah starts talking about how he never used to worry much about his ethnicity (Arab-American, with an Italian mother) before 9/11. And I realized how true that is. I never used to be stressed out about being Pakistani-American. At least, I was only stressed out about it for personal reasons, not political or social reasons. But since 9/11, and especially since the whole "Bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan" thing...well, I'm not so much worried for myself, but I worry about my family--my dad and my uncle, especially, who have made the U.S. their home and have been citizens since I was a small child. Whenever I hear about some poor Sikh or Hindu getting beaten or killed out of ignorance, I worry about my family members who actually are Muslim.

Shit, I worry about myself for having written the words "Muslim," "Pakistan," and "Bin Laden" in this blog post. The Department of Homeland Security is probably going to subscribe to my blog now. They will be bored to tears. I'm probably already on their watch list for being on MoveOn.org's mailing list. I've certainly had my baggage unnecessarily searched at airports.

But usually I don't worry for myself. Mostly, I can pass. I've even had people of Arab descent ask if I'm a Spanish-speaker. Pakistani people tend to have Pakistani-radar, but lately I guess I look more ethnically ambiguous. I guess, after all, I'm only half. I don't practice Islam, and I rarely wear traditional dress. Tonight it also occurred to me that I changed my last name to Rob's during the summer of 2001. I haven't been a Baig--my name hasn't sounded overtly Pakistani--since before 9/11. It's only my middle name that still has ethnic connotations. (Incidentally, I'm only a Sarah because that's all my parents could agree on. I was close to being a Stella or a Nasreen.) I guess I've probably escaped a lot more airport searches as a Stevenson.

Okay. Enough with the rant. I blame it on the wine.

Yawning, Slouching, Hiding...Day of Hermitude?

Today is just one of those days when I feel super lethargic and don't want to do anything productive at all. I've been pretty good at accomplishing nonproductivity so far today. I've even talked myself out of going to the gym, when Monday is usually one of my prime gym days. At first I tried to convince myself to go using guilt inducement--i.e., asking myself "Do you want to become fat/lazy/unhealthy? No? Well, there's one easy way to avoid that..." But it all came down to not being in the mood to deal with other people today and just wanting to nurture my introverted self. I was going to hop on our exercise bike instead, book propped on the little ledge, but then I realized that our exercise bike--along with most of the stuff in our back bedroom--is currently crammed in unruly piles draped with old bedsheets because the workmen doing construction on our house (more pictures soon) need to work with the air ducts back there.

So, there went exercising. I didn't really feel like it anyway. Maybe tomorrow. Today...I'll go run a couple of errands that I can't escape from (one of them involves depositing a freelance paycheck, so that's not so bad), get some work done, and make a Manhattan clam chowder, thus making use of an organic bell pepper and organic red potatoes that we got in our vegetable box this past week. I thought about corn chowder, but I think that the green bell pepper would be too overpowering in a corn chowder. We also have a Hatch (aka Anaheim) green chile and a handful of banana peppers--those might be good in a corn chowder, but I may just end up roasting the banana peppers and putting them in sandwiches again.

In the meantime, enjoy some cheesy Indian music videos. Tunak Tunak by the incomparable Daler Mehndi is one of my longtime favorites, even though my dad (who I guess understands Punjabi) said the lyrics are really stupid. I found a subtitled version and my dad is right, but still. It's a catchy song. And how can you beat the cheese-tacular special effects? You can't. However, even more scary is this one that my friend Jay sent me. It's not even good. Only in the sense that it's so bad it's good, but I mean, I've seen a lot of Bollywood musical numbers, and these dancers are not particularly in sync with one another. Plus, usually you can get some idea of what's going on in the film from the music video, but this one was just perplexing. And I think it must win an award for Most Costume Changes in a Single Scene.