"I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full."
--The Bell Jar

"She had a nice voice. A nice telephone voice, mostly. She should've carried a goddam telephone around with her."
--Holden Caulfield

From a free write from one of my freshmen, talking about how she hates the chirping birds that sit outside her bedroom window and wake her up (totally amazing):

"One day, I'll go hunting right outside my house and I'll have the stupid birds for dinner. I'll make fried chicken out of it...I wish [they] were extinct. I wish some monster would grow out of a rock or something and it would eat all of the birds so they will be extinct. I stared at my alarm clock. '8:30' it says. 'Whatever,' I say."

One of my students totally had a crush on Lennie when we were reading Of Mice and Men.

It might be my imagination, but as I was zooming through the commercials of Everybody Hates Chris on my TIVO (whose TIVO?), I swear I saw a commercial for a show with Holly Robinson Peete (JUMP!) and Rick Fox (could never jump). I was too afraid that I was correct to go back in TIVOtime and see if it was true...

I fucking hate dogs. I hate scary dogs. But when I am walking down the street and some dog starts barking at me and stuff, if I know that they can't get me then I will be all like, "Fuck you. You want some of this? Your mama's a bitch."

"I'm like Jimmy cracking corn and I just don’t care."
--Mr. Justin

It was only last weekend that I found out that there is a song called "Backdoor Man." Gooooood times...

So I have been rocking season 1 disc 1 of 21 Jump Street on the Netflix. Which has been good times. Initial observation: Johnny Depp has come a loooooooooong way as an actor. And this is the weirdest part: You know how Captain Fuller is in charge of the whole operation? Well not in the 2-part pilot or the 1st regular episode. The guy who has his role (different character though), is a total That Guy. He played the creepy Army Surplus store neo-Nazi owner in Falling Down (and was in Apocalypse Now and Valley Girl; talk about a potent threesome).

Best Scene in 21 Jump Street So Far: Peter DeLuise and Johnny Depp are coming out of a bowling alley after sucking at bowling, and they meet these 2 girls in the parking lot. Peter DeLuise goes up to them and says, "How would you 2 lovely young ladies like to take 2 depressed bowlers out and buy us some drinks?" The girls were all, "What's in it for us?" Peter DeLuise goes, "Breeeeakfast." Sweeeeeeeeeeeeet.

It's No Big Deal: Quite a few of my students got a kick out of the fact that, on a freewrite about a character in a novel and her motivation, I wrote on the board "doing it" instead of "having sex." Good times...

I had a dream that I went skiing with JC and she said she brought hot cocoa for us, but when we got to the top of the mountain she said she'd lied. Then I had a dream that I found this store with big, ripe, beautiful haas avocados on sale for 3 for 99 cents.

I can't remember who we were talking about, but Amber said that he was "A percussionist at heart." Oi, get it?

9 times out of 10, the guy that is driving slow in the fast lane is on his cell phone. Hey buddy, the world doesn’t stop just because you wanna chat. Unfortunately, it is forced to slow down. Oi, analogy coming...it's kind of like how you talk louder when you have headphones on. Being on the phone makes you not drive as fast as you think you are.

Did that analogy suck or what? It was about doing 2 things at once, and not being able to measure 1 because of the other. Look at me; reduced to justifying my own analogies.

I had my students doing some brainstorming on their 1950s schema (*schema*) before we started Catcher in the Rye. I was calling on students to name stuff from their lists. Some of the kids were being wise guys, and this one girl said, "It was 50 years after the start of the 19th Century. Um, your inner wiseass needs some serious refining. You're only off by 100 years.

Another student asked if Reagan was the president in the '50s.

Another other student asked me what the job title was of the girls that would bring fast food to your car on roller skates. I said, "Like Rollergirls?" She said "Yeah, like in Boogie Nights." I said, "You've seen Boogie Nights?" She earnestly replied, "Sorry." It was cute. And yes, I did tell her that Boogie Nights was about the '70s.

Do you ever think about how life is sort of like lying on the eastern side of a hill when the sun is about to set? You crawl higher and higher up the hill as the sun is setting, just to stay with the remaining bit of light. Just as you get to the top of the hill, the sun has set for good, there is no light left, and life is over.

Have you ever thought about a girl: "She'd be hot if she didn’t have a mustache." You could also call it the "I'll be back after 2 more drinks" phenomenon.

The biggest difference between real and generic medicines and stuff at Walgreen's is the taste. I think that Walgreen's is able to sell their stuff cheaper cuz they don’t spend any money on the department that develops/makes the products taste good.

One of the anatomy teachers at my school told me that sometimes during labor the woman's clitoris is sexually stimulated in order to alleviate some of the pain/tension incurred during childbirthing. That is totally fucking sweet. It's like getting a car wash and they throw in a free waxing. Or something. She thought I was being dumb when I asked if the doctor did the stimulating, but I think it is a legitimate question. The doctor is a medical professional after all.

You may or may not know that I fucking love fried chicken. I almost never ever get it because I am afraid that I will spiral out of control and start eating it twice a day, every day. I have a few things to say on the subject. First of all, don’t compare KFC to Popeye's. Just don’t do it. KFC is fucking nasty. Popeye's pees all over it. It is like comparing McDonalds to something that is a step below In N Out but way above the rest of the fast food restaurants (there's an analogy for you). Second (don’t you love the easy to read labeling?), I was reminiscing the other day in the staff lounge about Goldenbird, which is a mini-chain of fast food fried chicken places in LA that is hella good. Back in the day Ken would pick up Goldenbird to go for the family, and the one thing that super-set it apart from other fried chicken places was that you could order one of those little fry boats (like the box that the fries come in at Cheesepockets) that was just chock full of fried bits. Not fried chicken; the fried bits. Yum.

I wonder if those fried bits are vegetarian...

School funding is so bad that I had to steal staples out of a stapler at the library.

When I was like 6 or 7, my ma told me that I could make cologne out of the pine needles that fell on the ground from the park down the street from my house. I remember I used to fill big buckets with water in the backyard and stuff tons of those pine needles into them, thinking I could make my own cologne and that that would help me to get laid. It didn’t work.

Whenever I hear that Spoon song (which is one of my top 20 theme songs), Shirts that Fit Right, it always makes me think of how all my students never use the last comma in a series, and how that always makes me sad, and how I always insert the comma when I am editing their papers. One day it'll take/And they'll start to make/Shirts that fit right

Now with the new Dios album out, I was able to figure out exactly what he is saying inbetween the clear parts on that one sweet ass song I have been hearing live for over a year (in italics):

I'll love you til the end...
I'll love you til the end...
Psyche I'm just kidding
Cuz I hate the things you do...

by Justin
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