Friday, May 30, 2008

I'm really terrible

I was just listening to Queen's We Will Rock You on the Knight's Tale soundtrack, and i got to thinking--

Someone should make a fanvid for Prince Caspian and the Pevensies to "The Boys are Back in Town."

*sings* Guess who just got back today - them wild eyed boys that had been away. Hadn't changed, hadn't much to say, but man I still think them cats are crazy...

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

New Prince Caspian fic!

My New Prince Caspian Fanfic, A Jewel in the Crown, is up now on FF.net

Go read it now HERE!

Also-

New short story (or essay, almost) called Death and Time up on fictionpress.com

Go read that HERE!

New Poem

I wrote this poem when I was teacher shadowing a few weeks back- It's called "Ruby Beautiful"

give me ruby beautiful

give me emerald fine

kiss me in the moonlight,

let me know you're mine.

give me diamond lullaby,

give me sapphire song,

rock me on the porch swing,

all night long.

show me that you love me,

show me that you care

whether its with daisies

or diamonds for my hair.

Monday, May 26, 2008

P&P

damn. seems by 1830 Fanny and Charlotte would be 21, not 18 as was previously supposed.


Need to find someplace to put a queen victoria joke.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Updates

Item One- I no longer hate Edith Wharton, and am seriously considering posting the fiction in question.

Item Two- A new Kingdom of Heaven fanfic, God Wills It, is up now at ff.net (Links bar to your right for direction) New evidence reveals it may be theologically unsound- who knew!

Item Three- Jane Austen wants to take Edith Wharton to town for distracting me away from Husbands and Lovers. Unfortunately, updates on that front seem to be rather sparse at the moment, as George, Fanny, Charlotte, Richard and Co. have decided to take a love nest by the seashore and booze around while I sit and listen to sea shanties at home. Sometimes I hate my characters.

In other news, I may be open to adopting a new muse. Submissions for recommendation are being accepted now; candidates being considered will have to at least have appeared in one of my fanfics or interest me immensely.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Edith Wharton, I hate you.

You and Martin Scorsese. You've made me start writing this stupid little fanfiction no one will ever read (because I'm the only person in the world who writes Edith Wharton fanfiction) and what's worse, it's not going anywhere!

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Travel! They exhorted her. See Europe and all its wonder while you are still young. And she had, staying in London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, St. Petersburg. She’d seen all there was to see, and then some, until her trunks were tired and their sides were filled with labels from hotels with exotic names- Hotel de Ville, Hoffenhammerplatz Haus, Le Russe Imperial. Then she had bought new trunks, new clothes and traveled more. There were bits of her past all over Europe’s salons and receiving rooms: a forgotten fan at a cafĂ© in Madrid, a dress left for the maid who had attended to her in Berlin. She had forgotten and purposely misplaced her possessions until nothing remained that reminded her of Jefferson.

Then she had returned home.

The great house on Fifth Avenue seemed either too big or too small – it seemed to depend on the time of day she observed the large front hall and the darkly paneled sitting rooms. Too old, though, her new architectural sensibilities told her, too old and too fusty by half. Remake, remodel, renew, or better still, knock it down! No, no, too soon for that. Her father had designed this house, and she was not about to give him up and change it all at once, losing the only bit of him she had left.

A year later, and they were still cooing over her. Poor Beth, all of New York was saying, Poor Miss Danderidge. Lost her father and then had her engagement broken and then ran off to Europe to recooperate. Poor thing.

That’s the one thing that never changes, Beth, her mother had reminded her when she returned home. the false modesty, the false sympathy, and the false friends of Society. Society is still here, Beth, as much as you wanted it to crawl into a corner and die while you were away. You’ll have to face it sooner or later, Beth. They’ll be expecting you to.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Random Culture Find Status- War, Inc and recent article

I told you several weeks ago in a post about a movie that was coming out called War, Inc with John Cusack and some other people about a war in which everything has been branded. I'm not personally jumping up to go see this movie (I'm not a huge John Cusack fan) but neither, it seems, is anyone else.

Mark Caro, of the Chicago Tribune, wrote in his "Pop Machine" blog as well as in the Sunday, May 18th section of the Trib,

"...“War, Inc.” isn’t exactly riding the blockbuster train either. Co-written by Cusack (and, as he told me last year, largely directed by him despite a full credit for Joshua Seftel), this “Grosse Pointe Blank”-meets-Naomi Klein [bold print mine] political satire opens next Friday in New York and Los Angeles but has no further release dates scheduled, including in his hometown. (John’s sister Joan, another Chicagoan, co-stars.)"


What did I tell you people! Naomi Klein No-Logo-ism all over the place! Anyway- Professor Steve would be proud of me. I felt smart; I knew what Mark Caro was talking about. GO THEORY!

Now, Caro goes on to talk about how the movie isn't very well publicised and how the less than success of the film is also due in part to the critical response it got at the Tribeca Film festival. Representation, anyone? Having a movie be successful is just as much about advertising (guaranteed representation) as it is about how the press and the public represent it. The best movies are the ones you walk out of the theater wanting all your freinds to see so you can discuss it. Apparently War, Inc is not one of these movies. Shame, really. Naomi Klein deserves more screen time herself.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Student teaching DAY THREE, FOUR, and FIVE

yesterday was student teaching day three, which began miserably (for a laundry list of reasons) and ended reasonably well. I forgot to give my dad a job application, my mother made me change a perfectly cute outfit, and I had cramps. glorious way to start a Wednesday.

anyway, I really don't know what happened between 8 and 3, but by the end of the day I was feeling pretty good about myself.

More on that later. We began watching The Age of Innocence in Mrs. A's first AP class, and Edith Wharton and Martin Scorsese have me hooked. I want to see the end of this film come hell or high water. I've even started writing a short story set in the 1870s. I like it so far, although there's a bump in the middle that's tastelessly overwrought and sounds suspiciously like a bad paperback of a certain genre that women of a certain age seem to flock to like flies to fruit. My main character (Beth Danderidge) had the misfortune to loose her father and then have her fiance run off to Argentina. She fled to Europe, learned a lot about herself, and is now trying to deal with Society with a capital S and her treacherous fiance's best friend, whom she jilts because she really doesn't like him.

.... Dear lord, that sounds worse now than when I started writing it. Alright, so the only merit this piece has now is its prose. Oh well. The trials and tribulations of attempting to write something happy and only getting trash.

Day four has yet to end, and was also amazing. I lead a little bit of a class discussion on poetry and how you approach it, got a chance to read two poems (one of mine and one of Carl Sandberg's) to the 2R students, shared an expierence where I made the right choice with the 2B students (they didn't seem impressed with a 20 page research paper)

Day five is just starting, so I'll update all y'all later.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Student Teaching DAY TWO

Day two of my teacher shadowing went swimmingly. I graded some quizzes, proofread papers, wrote part of an exam, watched two very different classes today (Mrs. B's first years in the Computer Lab and Mr. A's sophomores in group work), and shared a poem by Larry Schug with the two sophomore classes reading Dandelion Wine. The poem is called Dandelions, and it's in his book "The Turning of Wheels," if you want to read it. A really, really great poem.

Now I have to finish filling out a job application. blargh.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Student Teaching DAY ONE

So Student teaching today at the HS English department went FABULOUSLY. I'll refer to everyone in code so that school administrators who may happen to find this page will not be put on to the covert teacher drama I may chronicle here.

I am shadowing Mrs. A as a HS English teacher, and today was my first day. (Contrary to my father's belief, I was not acting as her literal shadow the whole day) I was introduced to all her classes as Miss Gray, which really tickled me pink, and several other teachers, including Mr. A, Mrs. B, and Mrs. D, were all glad to see me back and wished me well.

Today I oversaw group projects in 2R classes and helped several groups with idea brainstorming for their imagery presentations. They were all very impressed to hear that I had read Dandelion Wine (the book in question) in two short days.

I also sat in on 2 AP classes, each of whom are designing and implementing their own projects for the last 8 days of class. One class is watching Wharton's The Age of Innocence, which I am excited to be watching. the other class is doing a project that involves putting together soundtracks relative to the books that they have read so far in AP and compiling corresponding analysis relating the songs to the book. Not nearly as interesting by half.

So, I am bailing on the second AP class to observe Mr. A's History Class, which should be equally fun because they are doing a unit on the Palestinian/ Israeli Peace crisis. I'm trying to find a good clip from Lawrence of Arabia because I don't know how far they'll be in this and David Lean's filmmaking is made out of AWESOME, which I don't think these sophomores realize.

I also got to sit in on Mrs. A's 2B class, which was also very, very interesting. Being something of an english geek, I've never been in a Regular English class, let alone a Basic one. A different enviroment, to say the least. Mrs. A informed me that many of these students write at a 4th grade level and read at a 5th grade, or the other way around. Well below grade level, at any rate. And they don't get better because...they're in high school! High school English teachers are not taught how to teach reading, because that's something that - NEWSFLASH!- kids are already supposed to be able to do by sophomore year in high school. I also got to read some of their essays, which, for sophomores in high school, were terrible. My little sister writes better essays, and she's in the 8th grade.

But considering that Mrs. A and her team teacher had to teach these kids cold turkey over two weeks how to write and research a two page essay, they were good. Factoring in reading level and writing level, they were actually really good. All they needed was a little analysis. And some of the best essays I read were actually from ELL students- English Language Learners. They just needed some one-on-one conference time, I think, to really polish them off.

So that was Day One. I hope Day Two is just as good.

Corporate Buyout

In a sudden and long predicted move, the owner of this blog has decided to phase out the 'Literary Theory Posting' capacity and phase in the Stage Two of the Blog Life Continuum, the Wordsmithy fucntionality, of underaspreadingchestnuttree.blogspot.com.

Per this notice, this blog will now be repository to all literary outputs Wordsmith, and will be an update log for her many stories, fanfictions and literary exploits.

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