Reality

In this festive holiday season, sometimes we forget how bad things can be out there. One student of mine reminded me just how much our world needs to change on Monday.

Over the weekend her older sister was shot. She is alive and in the hospital and the man who shot her is in police custody. She was doing nothing wrong, did not know the man who shot her, and was just walking down the street.

My fifth grade student and her older brother, who is in sixth grade, are switching off every day who misses school to babysit their siblings while their mom spends the days in the hospital at her daughter’s bedside.

As an adult who has experienced the loss of a loved one, I still have no idea how to even approach my student. There is no reason that at 10 years old she should be trying to cope with such a tragedy. This student and I aren’t particularly close, but she clearly wanted to talk to someone about it when all I had to was ask her how her weekend was on Monday morning for her to tell me what happened. Her brother refuses to talk to anyone about it, and only refers to it as “the incident on Friday”.

What kind of twisted world do we live in that this is a common occurrence for my students to face?

An Ape Displaced or A Largely Unnecessary Essay on the Morality of Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong's first appearance is that of the aggressor- he kidnaps Jumpman's girlfriend Paula and for no discernable reason ascends a construction site to escape the pursuing beau. However, this plan is absurd- Donkey Kong is, after all, an ape, and his transposition from natural habitat to urban environment leaves him unprepared for long term survival.

Script for a movie presented without comment, starring Noah Yuenkel and David Reed

AWKWARDLY INTENSE

[David and Noah are sitting on the couch. Hold shot from behind for several seconds.]

[Cut to front, then close-up as both turn and speak at once] DAVID&NOAH: Do you have the remote?

DAVID: Wow, that was intensely awkward.

NOAH: [slight pause] Awkwardly intense.

[Closer yet] DAVID [with dawning insistence]: Intensely awkward.

Now cutting to various scenes as the battle escalates

[NOAH walks past DAVID humming wistfully to a musical snow globe.] NOAH: Awkwardly intense.

[NOAH and DAVID flip through old yearbook. Finger point to awkward guy.]

DAVID: [ecstatic] Intensely awkward!

[DAVID squeezes past NOAH in an incredibly narrow hallway] NOAH: [satisfied] Awkwardly intense.

[NOAH turns on a Christmas tree full of ornaments of his face. Pause. He turns it off, leaving himself in darkness.] DAVID: [call from offscreen] Intensely awkward!

[DAVID climbs tree, triumphantly reaches for last branch, which is NOAH’s leg.]

NOAH [perching contentedly]: Awkwardly intense.

[DAVID bites down on a hard old baguette, fails to make a dent. NOAH grabs baguette and aggressively finishes the job. He does not relish what must be done.]

DAVID: You win! [with slight violation] You win.

Script for a movie, presented without comment

IN BED WITH A HONEY

[Slow pan from two pairs of feet up to a guy and a hot girl are wrapped in covers in bed, a foot apart. They stare blankly at each other, moving slightly on occasion, for a minute and a half.]

Naturally.

"Because he spent so much time with professor Oak. If you remember, they were like best buds. Its like, Ash left krabby at the day care FOREVER. So naturally the krabby is at level 60 or something, and it makes sense why he would evolve after one battle."

DREED to !QUOI

I Love You, George Takei

Played out, blah, blah, blah. Just read it.

"Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more will power, more drive, but because they know productivity is a game of cat and mouse versus a childish primal human predilection for pleasure and novelty which can never be excised from the soul, " from Procrastination via You Are Not So Smart

Delayed Introduction

"夢の途中(In the Midst of a Dream) by Shuichi Nakano"

Dear Everybody,

I realize that my addition to the reboot of this blog has been rather lacking, and it can only be attributed to my own personal failings and the accompanying ennui. Alas, this is but a feeble excuse! So, without further ado, I present an update, a preview, and discussions of my current state of affairs.

ONWARD

© Jake Naughton 2010

Transfixed by the firm hand of taxidermy and the gaze of GOD, we look ever onward and upward. From the PACIFICNORTHWEST™.

All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,

Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,

Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,

   -Walt Whitman, America

Lonesome Cold Weather: New Music!

from Gerda Suzanna Vegt

Dear Noah,

I hear it is unseasonably cold in Wisconsin right now. To help bear the cold, here are a few things to things to listen to that will warm your autumnal spirit. Cheers, to warmer hearts.

Manifest Destiny™

Gladiator versus the Wyoming wilds © Jake Naughton 2010

OH!FAIREST READERS MINE
In the coming days prepare thine eyes and stomachs for an onslaught of hitherto unseen images from the PACIFICNORTHWEST™ archives.

an intro...!quoi

hi i'm khoa.
this is me in summary:

Herald, the intern

"Puppies Dream" from Ray's Writing Blog: http://raymond-teodos-writings.blogspot.com/

Dear Everybody,

My name is Herald, the editorial intern. I'm supposed to write about myself, but I'm not sure why. I've known these cats for quite a while (four years by count, possibly three by theirs) and I'm quite fond of them. Most of them write frequently while I don't. But it can't be that hard, it's just like talking you know? I do that all the time.

These are the things I like. Actually, let me run down the list of things I look at every Sunday morning.

Halloween Books-What makes your list?

The lightening streaks across the sky over Lake Michigan, chased quickly by the growl of thunder. My favorite weather is thunder storms, and as Halloween approaches, it seems fitting that the weather tonight matches the creepy mood of the holiday. As a bibliophile with eyes too big for my wallet, I have always dreamed of owning a bookstore. And in said imaginary bookstore, I have already planned the Halloween "must reads table".

Allison

Sitting at my kitchen table with a bowl of pasta, large glass of milk, iphone, and stack of papers to grade on a Friday night, I thought to my self "self, find a way to procrastinate!" And thus, I decided it was time to write my introduction. While this encompasses most of my life, if you need more detail, read on!

My name is Allison, I am 22, and I am currently residing in the fantastic city of Chicago. Although I originate from Saint Paul, Minnesota, I spent four years at UW-Madison and have now made yet another move. According to that diploma that I spent years working towards, I am a secondary education English teacher. According to my job that I get paid way too little for, I am a 5th grade paraprofessional.

Working at a charter school in one of Chicago's poorest neighborhoods on the west side has taken over my life, and thus most of my posts will probably center somewhere around there. The school day runs from 8 am to 5 pm and I spend it working primarily with a boy who suffered a stroke due to his sickle cell anemia 2 years ago. At age 11 he walks with a cane, suffered some brain damage, and is one of the sweetest children I have had the pleasure to work with.

Interests outside of teaching involves copious amounts of reading when given the time, drinking a lot of coffee, tweeting, and hanging out with my roommate that I have known since age 5 when she asked me to be bus friends on the way to kindergarten.

Happy reading!

Noah

 Howdy, reader- my name is Noah, and I am a husky voiced, handsome twenty-something that enjoys long walks on the beach, candle-lit dinners and altercations with tentacular horrors from beyond the stars.

Here is a picture of me. Please, don’t stare like that- I embarrass easily.

Let's get to know each other.

I live in the fine city of Madison, WI, living out my post-college days as a general-use underling at a factory. It is precisely as interesting as you have already assumed, and I won’t waste your time with the details.

I am, by aspiration, a writer of fictions; by perspiration, a manufacturer of comics; and by leisure, a complete media-vore: literature, comics, music, television, film, videogames and the trapping of the internet. As such, my contributions to this glorious land of Scrabblegories are those of review, preview and examination of whatever is currently catching my eye and devouring my time.

I can already tell we’re going to get along fine.

The Iraq War Logs

So this is literally breaking as I type this, and I know you all aren't as obsessed with media consumption as I am, but something extremely significant is happening right now.

As you may or may not know, Wikileaks has been ramping up to unleash something around 400,000 leaked and previously classified dox on the Iraq war (unsurprisingly, the largest document leak in US military history). Major news outlets around the world including the New York Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Al Jazeera (links after the jump) and others have had complete access to all the documents for 10 weeks under condition of embargo until about 30 minutes ago. Here's the exciting part: simultaneously 5 of the most important news outlets in the world released their in-depth reporting on the information cache. Nothing like this has ever happened before. And everyone has some pretty damning discoveries.

Jake

illustration by MoxyCreative

lede:
Rather than do a lengthy intro, I thought I might just give you a digest of links I tweeted [follow me!] today. Lazy? Yes! But it's emblematic of what I'm interested in and the gist of topics that I'll probably be posting about here.

soundbite:

I currently work as an intern at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, a journalism non-profit that funds in-depth reporting on under-cover issues around the globe and spend a lot of time on the computer at work.  

+ 

I am a photographer. Find my work at my website, Jake Naughton Photography.

more after the jump

An Introduction: James

Greetings fellow citizens of the internet, my name is James T. Tynion IV, and I am generally pretty awesome. Here is an awesome drawing of me, so you can see for yourself:

(Art by Joe Kuenzle)

REWELCOME TO SCRABBLEGORIES

Picture Unrelated (via chan4chan.com)

Howdy Folks.

If you're reading this, congratulations! You are literate. You're also on the World Famous SETTLERS OF SCRABBLEGORIES, a delightful addition to the already overstuffed blogodrome that we call home.

So here's the story-