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Blog: Food Over My Head, Roof in My Belly

Last week was an odd one. There was meeting on top of meeting at school, with one whole day given over to “Professional Development.” This is when everybody in the English department gets together to listen to presentations about textbooks and online resources.

Classes for teachers, basically.

I get the feeling that, because teachers are teaching classes all the time, they really want to believe that more classes is always a good thing. Sort of like if there were a meeting of gastroenterologists and they all went to get colonoscopies, thinking, “This is what regular people do!” It’s fine enough in theory, and everyone can do with a good flushing out, but sometimes all you want is a chance to sit down and do your goddamned work.

Plus, most of these “Professional Development” sessions are led by textbook salesmen. Shills, in other words.

After such a long week, I was really hoping to unwind. Sarah and I do this by just sort of existing at home. We don’t go out too much and aren’t all that adventurous. Sarah knits and reads. I read and write. The cat vacillates between her lap and mine and we make a real time of it.

We had to go places, though, on Friday. My dad asked us to drive to where he lives so we could visit a Brazilian steakhouse. It was only a 45-minute drive and we honestly haven’t been visiting…anybody as often a we should, so we hopped on down and made a night of it.

The pseudo-Brazilians kept coming around with meat on skewers and all of us had…too much. (The salted pork was particularly delicious.)

The next day, my older brother came to town for a sports thing and brought a whole bunch of beef for us to take home, so now our freezer is full. This is a thing that happens often in Nebraska — a friend or relative kills a whole cow and spreads the beef around. Like Jesus except with red meat instead of fish.

A part of me wishes we were the adventurous people we used to be — not all that long ago we were living in Indonesia, eating shakshuka on the beach, driving a scooter through rice paddies and forests where monkeys steal cell phones. I spend too much time these days wondering, “What changed?”

When did we become a couple of chumps who just sit at home in Nebraska of all places?

It happened, as many other things did, during the pandemic. I feel like we haven’t been able to “recover” since then, as if the world has been getting slowly and inexorably worse in every measurable way. Our health, both mental and physical, haven’t been great. Everything financial is pretty much f*cked. Everyone is divided, storms are destroying everything, and it turns out Joker 2 probably won’t be very good.

As often happens when I’m in this kind of mood (I’m sick today with some kind of flu and feeling blue about it), I tend to blame myself for things that are going on.

Things aren’t even really that bad. We have food and a roof over our head. We’re getting older and maybe want to settle down a bit. I’ve got to practice gratitude. Even though I’m not all that good at it.

Still. I look around where I live, look at what’s going on in America, and I think, “Why in the hell is everyone working so hard to maintain….THIS?” We’re like people on the Titanic hanging up “ICEBERG 2024” signs and complaining about all the immigrants locked up below decks. Who would want to shovel coal in that scenario?

I don’t have an answer. But grading papers in which students write that Elon Musk INVENTED the goddamned ELECTRIC CAR to HELP HUMANITY makes me wonder what in the hell I’m losing sleep over.

Sigh. Food over my head. Roof in my belly. This is my mantra.

Blog: Week of Sept. 22 – Sept. 28, 2024

Every week is a “rough week” when you’re a new teacher. While I may not be “new” (I’ve been in classrooms for coming up on 15 years now), most of my years have in South Korean classrooms — this is only my 2nd year as a teacher in America. So, I still count myself amongst the ranks of people who are just figuring things out.

The biggest difference so far is that South Korean middle-schoolers are more “adult” than most of my American high-schoolers. By every measurable rubric. There’s more accountability, more empathy, more hard work. I try not to get too down on American high-schoolers because of it — I don’t think it’s their fault — but it makes my job a lot harder, and it just makes me…I don’t know. Sad.

One of my students this week got in trouble for standing up and walking out of the classroom. Where’d he go? I’m not 100%, but I suspect he went to do drugs. (Weed vapes are a big problem.) When he tried to come back into class, I sent him up to his administrator. “That’s unfair! I was just going to the bathroom!”

“Okay, but you went without asking, didn’t sign out, and you didn’t get a pass.”

“I had the pass!”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I had the pass, but [ANOTHER STUDENT] took it from me!”

“Alright, you can explain that to your administrator and we’ll sort it out.”

He left in a huff, throwing that day’s assignment on the ground — a gesture that somehow lost its meaning when you consider that he hadn’t yet done any work on the assignment. Matter of fact, this student hasn’t turned in a single assignment all year.

His administrator listened to the student and called me to confirm the story. “[STUDENT] says you sent him to me for going to the bathroom. Is that true?”

“He left class without permission and without a pass. I don’t know where he went.”

“So he’s lying when he says he had a pass?”

“Yes.”

I heard the student in the background practically crying about what a liar I was. A bold move considering our security cameras clearly showed him leaving class without a pass. Even when that was explained to him — even when he was shown the security footage — he still maintained that he’d left with a pass.

I should point out that, while I was talking to the student and his administrator, 34 other students were waiting for class to continue. Class sizes in most American schools are ridiculous and, frankly, untenable. There should be, at most, 20 students per teacher. Our school usually does 35. (One of my classes has 36, even though there are only 35 desks. It’s a trivial problem considering there hasn’t been a single day when every student has been in class, but still.)

And many people might say, “What’s the big deal? If the student had to go to the bathroom and went to the bathroom, he shouldn’t be punished for that. Stop micromanaging!” I can see why some people might think that — it’s because they are idiots who haven’t spent any time at a school in the last 20 years.

The problem isn’t that he went to the bathroom, it’s that he left class and nobody knew where he went. Why is that such a big deal? Safety. For one, unsupervised students sometimes fight each other in hallways, brutally, and for two: In the event of a fire or, you know, an active shooter, you need to know where everyone is.

The fact that this student lies and behaves like a petulant child isn’t surprising; he is a petulant child, and likely a petulant child being raised by a petulant child — but what is surprising is that we’re expecting him to improve while stuffing him in a classroom filled with 30+ students who also have behavior issues, students who have learning disabilities, and students who lost out on years of socialization because of COVID.

I’ve spent several hours after school this week talking with counselors, administrators, and making phone calls to parents. Not just about this one student, but about him and dozens of others. When I get home, I haven’t been in a “reading” mood.

Mostly what I want to do is sleep.

I have made some progress on “I Capture the Castle,” which is light-hearted and just as sweet as box of lady fingers — by I’ve fallen awfully short of my reading goal. I’m almost finished, though!

This is turning into one of those “should I post this?” posts that I ultimately end up deleting because this is supposed to be a blog about books and I want it to be a positive one. Ultimately, though, my job drastically impacts my reading habits. And it’s probably cathartic to let all this stuff out.

I should point out that I have a few exchange students from South Korea in my homeroom. We spent part of yesterday looking at where we used to live in Seoul on Google Maps while lamenting how much we miss things like Isaac Toast. It was a fun, if not bittersweet trip down memory lane.

I’ve been dreaming about South Korea a lot recently. It’d be an understatement to say I miss it there, but it’s true. I miss the students, the food, the people I used to work with. It’s not a perfect place, but they care about education in a way that most Americans can’t fathom.

And I frankly can’t imagine what it’s like for a South Korean student to transfer here to America. I mean, I’m sure they have a lot more free time without after-school academies, and the workload is probably trivial for them, but the culture shock must be huge.

Blog: Week of Sept. 15 – Sept. 21, 2024

I gave in this week and finally paid for a subscription to MidJourney, the AI-powered image generator.

To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of AI art. I agree with most artists when they say that we should use AI to do the mundane tasks while humans get to make the art; but the side of me that’s into computer science finds this technology too fascinating not to play with.

While I’m curious about how the “algorithm” generates images (amongst other media), I recognize that most of what AI generates is hot garbage.

(Although, I will say that Obscurest Vinyl over on the YouTube has AI bumping out some real bangers.)

Imagine That

My initial plan for incorporating AI art into this blog was simple: I needed to generate dumb little images that would break up the text to fit with the particular voice I’m trying to cultivate: Using the visual elements of click-bait articles while having well-written, punchy paragraphs. Something snarky that people wouldn’t mind reading on a phone or a computer screen.

Like if Kurt Vonnegut wrote for Buzzfeed.

Heidi-ho!

Vonnegut did all his best writing at Starbags.

I’m no Vonnegut, and I would hazard a guess that most Buzzfeed writers can sling together a snappier blog post than I can, but it’s good to have goals.

Anywho, when this whole AI art thing started popping off a few years ago, it caught my attention because of what it was doing algorithmically. For years and years, getting a computer to parse language was a bit of a holy grail. Then, BAM, all of a sudden not only can computers parse language, they can generate visual images from it!

Holy shit!

Even if you think these AI image generators are stealing from artists, which is a fair point, that is an astounding leap in software technology. And it only gets cooler the deeper into it you dig.

The old adage “Garbage In, Garbage Out” immediately sprang to my mind, and I wondered what these generators would do if they were given a bunch of nonsense.

What, for example, would they make of the first stanza of “Jabberwocky?“

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe...

The answer, according to Stable Diffusion, is this:

All I did was copy the first stanza, paste it into the prompt box, and hit “Generate.” The above image is what came out. And it’s dazzling! Every bit as nonsensical as the poem itself, but for entirely different reasons.

Even the people who wrote the software can’t explain how or why a computer spit out that particular image when given words like “brillig” and “gimble in the wabe.” In a sense that is almost too real to be comfortable, that image is based on the hallucinations of a machine.

That is astounding. And maybe a little unnerving.

Still, it’s nothing to be afraid of. Even if you’re an artist, you should think of this whole AI thing as little more than a fad, because that’s ultimately what it is. We’re a long way from having AI generate anything of actual, lasting beauty (if that’ll ever happen at all) and there will always be a demand for good, human-made art.

Paragraphs as Prompts

The images I’ve been generating have mostly been inspired by Stephen Gammell, the artist who drew all the illustrations for the classic, “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” series. (And who has other cool art available for purchase.) This is mostly due to nostalgia, but it’s also because I don’t want to pick a color scheme, so black and white images work well.

Ultimately, though, what I want to do is plug in entire paragraphs from books and stories to see what kinds of images applications like MidJourney and Stable Diffusion will dream up.

Let’s give it a try, shall we? Using a paragraph from the author I’m currently reading — Clarice Lispector, the Brazilian short story author whose “Collected Stories” is an absolute blast.

Here’s a paragraph from her 1952 story, “Love.”

And, if she had passed through love and its hell, she was now combing her hair before the mirror, for an instant with no world at all in her heart. Before going to bed, as if putting out a candle, she blew out the little flame of the day.

Here’s what Stable Diffusion, run on my own computer, makes of that:

I’m getting some “The Ring” vibes from this one.

And don’t forget this zinger:

Lol wut.

The problem with Stable Diffusion is that it’s pretty dumb. As you can see by that last image, it latched onto some of the nouns and just . . . didn’t know what to make of them. Is she wearing a candle as a hat? And is she rubbing . . . wax on her face?

Stable Diffusion also makes everyone have eyes like a stroke victim and can’t draw hands.

Here’s the same Clarice Lispector prompt put into MidJourney:

This . . . isn’t bad.

I feel like that one actually captures the spirit of the paragraph. Somewhat pensive, exhausted; no physical candle present but definitely showing a metaphorical “blowing out the day.”

And this one…

“Accio hairbrush!”

…depicts a witch literally trying blow out the little flame of the day?

Beats me.

Whatever the case, MidJourney definitely produces better results than Stable Diffusion. And it does so without making my computer run hotter than a firecracker.

Looking Ahead

I’ve got several books picked out for the next week and beyond. Clarice Lispector is first, followed by Dodie Smith and a few “classics” I was able to borrow from my school.

I also just got done updating the 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die page! The list is complete and organized and I’ve underlined everything I’ve already read already.

Oh, and I’m on BlueSky now. Follow me if you’d like to hear more about what I’m reading or to see pictures of my cat.

Blog: Week of Sept. 8 – Sept 14, 2024

It’s been a rough week for reading. Both forms of school (the classes I teach and the classes I’m taking online) are taking up my time, Virginia Woolf isn’t the easiest read in the world, and there have been some … occurrences that have put everyone on edge and have me feeling on the verge of panic a lot more often than usual.

Earlier this week a victim of bullying brought a gun to a school in my district and, when confronted by his bully, shot the other student in the torso. The student had a history of being bullied — it’s likely why he brought the gun in the first place; he wanted to protect himself.

I am sorry for nearly everyone involved. The student who thought he had no other choice than to resort to bringing a gun to school; the student who didn’t wake up that morning thinking he’d end up in intensive care; all the other students who had to deal with the terror and uncertainty of a lockdown; and all the parents and families who joined the ranks of thousands of Americans who have faced similar horrors, who have gotten in their car and rushed to school to pick up a child they hope, hope, hope is okay.

And the crowd goes WILD!

Not Feeling So “Peppy”

My high school has been blessedly free of gun violence, but it’s easy to see that everyone is thinking about it. We get reminders to keep our doors locked and never, never, never open them for people we don’t know. There’s been an increased presence of school resource officers as a just-in-case measure, but seeing three guys in body armor outside a pep rally doesn’t make anybody feel better.

At the football game last Friday, a rumor spread through the crowd that someone had come with a weapon, which caused people to run away in fear. No one was hurt and the rumors turned out to be baseless, but it goes to show how worried people are.

“The Desire to Flee.”

I always try to tell students that it is gun violence in schools is a tragedy, but it is a relatively rare tragedy and that they shouldn’t dwell on it. But, well. When the guy you’re standing next to gets struck by lightning, it’s hard not to keep your eyes on the clouds.

The Man, the Mythulu

In an attempt not to focus on all the horrible things that are happening: Sarah and I went out to get “sushi” on Friday — put in “quotes” because we had California Rolls and a bunch of other deep fried cream cheese cylinders that Americans call “sushi” — and had a few bottles of hot sake for good measure. (I’m not knocking this cuisine. It’s delicious, but only very charitably referred to as “sushi.”)

When we got home, we played some Mythulu.

Starter Pack A and Starter Pack B

If you aren’t familiar, Mythulu is a card game that helps you generate ideas for stories. You have a deck of cards that are split into six categories — Traits, Elements, Habitats, Characters, Textures, and Relationships — that represent tropes in storytelling, which you can draw in certain combinations to create new ideas.

For example, you might draw “Sky,” “Ash,” and “Memory.” You put those three together to get a roving cloud of ash, perhaps spread from a crematorium smokestack, that implants memories of the dead into anyone who is overtaken by the cloud.

There are no wrong ideas. You just draw the cards and let your imagination run wild. These cards are FANTASTIC for developing story ideas or parts of a story. Sarah and I often play it when we’ve had a few drinks; not because we’re actively working on a writing project together, rather just because it’s fun to talk about.

We decided we’d draw cards to create a monster that we could use in a fantasy story.

“Don’t dwell, children. It won’t do to dwell.”

As we were drawing, we brainstormed what we thought the cards meant.

“It’s a creature, right? And it lives in the ground. It grows really slowly and … and here’s the thing … when people see it, they want to take care of it. Like, like it release a chemical or something that triggers maternal instinct.“

“People want to take it home and look after it.”

“Right! They want to take it home and feed it and love it and they’ll often times just sit and look at it. That’s how magical it is. People put this monster in their house and just look at it and adore it and want to keep it alive.”

“It tricks them. It bamboozles them.”

“Yeah! It plays the long con. It’s completely helpless unless it can find someone to take it home and give it everything it needs. But … but the people who are being conned, they don’t even mind it.”

“They’re excited! They’re excited to have it. They tell all their friends about it and go on the internet to do research about how to best take care of this little monster. They take pictures of it and share them.”

“And it never stops! For their whole life, these poor suckers are dedicated to caring for this monster that’s latched onto their lives. Some people even have more than one. They fill their whole house up with them, and taking care of these damned things becomes their entire existence!“

The horror!

We’d been drinking, so it took us a little longer than it should have to realize that we were describing houseplants. In our attempt to create a new, fantastical monster, we created ferns.