I can't ever really bring myself to just blog about what goes on on a day-to-day basis, becasue there's just so much stuff, but it all seems insane if I take it out of context.

So I blog more about what I think, and lately I'm wondering why there seem to be so many people who feel like they have no support. Is it really true that such a huge proportion of people don't have the time or energy to actually make and maintain connections? It seems like at least half of what I hear lately from the myriad of people who surround me is about people feeling isolated, like they have no one to turn to, or people getting hurt by someone who runs away in an attempt to keep their life clean, easy, and free of attatchments, or people on the reverse side, telling near-miss stories about narrowly avoiding being tied down or tainted by someone else's messy life.

Is this something unique or particularly prevalent among my generation or not? What about our society or culture - is this connected to the social contexts (or maybe lack thereof) that we live in? At the bottom of all this, the question is how, why, and when did so many of us stop beign willing to invest in eachother's lives, and what can we do to change it?

I could go on, but I won't. I just don't have much rant in me today. Instead, I have lots to do in this already dwindling day, and a head-to-toe rash proving that I'm allergic to my new laundry soap. Did I mention that my practicum starts on Monday? Same day my mom's moving.

there's this feeling I seem to get every fall, where I find myself trying to stay grounded in reality because nostalgia and fantasy conspire to unhinge me altogether. so I try to write a poem. and I do. but it's not what it should be, and I wonder what exactly is actually going on with my psyche. I imagine alternate realities trailing from my finger tips like ribbonsand wonder how I stay on the right thread. my mind slides from one to another, and I slip through lives like beaded curtains until someone calls my name and I realize I'm doodling explicit and inappropriate rhyming couplets when I'm supposed to be involved in some mind numbing brainstorming on class routines. No, I won't read you the ideas I've come up with. I don't think the wet slippery relationship between snails and waves is appropriate stapler-use protocol, and that's as close as I came to on topic. Except I don't say that stuff, because my brain is already back inside skin, but it slipped away so quickly I'm not evern sure whose or when. so I write incoherent blog post that make no sense but meant to say I love you. all. but I'm too nostalgic to delete anything.

Just in case anyone doesn't get my e-mail, I have a new address - same as the old one, just now (at)gmail(dot)com. If you don't get my e-mail, you shold probably drop me a line cause I might not have your current e-mail address. end public service announcement.

I've found out that I'm going to be doing my practicum at Tupper, which is fantastic. On the down side, I'm not sure when it'll start, but that's okay because I hope our teachers snap this boody government in two. COPE announced yesterday that they'll be walking off the job in support of the teachers on Friday in Vancouver/Lower Mainland, so expect chaos - probably no busses, post offices, universities, and so on. There will, however, be a huge rally from 3-6 at broadway and Granville that anyone who loves education really should go to, so I'll see you there, right?

heavy rainfall warning in effect. running around in the swamp. soggy dog-scented gortex on the bline. I'd way rather stay in bed. off to school I go. boots.

I saw an ad last night where a son gives his Dad an A&W Grandpa burger to tell him that he and his wife are expecting. It's a new low humanity, a new low. Say it with an "all beef" patty.

Your Inner Gangsta by crash_and_burn
What is yo name?
Yo gangsta name be	The Beef
You ride around in a	Neon Pink H2 Hummer
Yo gang	The Mafia
Yo shoes be	Bathroom slippers
Yo dubs be dis big, fool	2,564
How much money you got?	$1.15299355851301e+26
How gangsta are you, bitch?: 87%
Quiz created with MemeGen!

yes, that does say 87% gangster.

Generate your Anime Style by Jena-su
Name:
Hair:	Never stays the same style/colour for long.
Clothes:	A bit revealing, but nothing too over the top.
Powers:	Light magic
Special Features:	Bunny ears and tail
Sidekick:	Large dragon.
Attitude:	Extremely smart, very quiet.
Weapon:	Wrist blades
Quiz created with MemeGen!

that one's just creepy...

Well, as the Thanksgiving long weekend draws to a close, I'm as stuffed as a turkey but typing away at school work as usual. Cam and I had dinner with his family on Saturday, and then I had dinner with my clan last night, while Cam was at work. The food, on both counts, was fantastic, and I have enough leftovers to keep me from having to cook for at least a couple of days. Ness's pumpkin pie and Chen's cake and buns were probably the food highlights, alongside Cam's Mom's stuffing. mmm.

I woke up on Saturday with a really sore throat and a cold, which are thankfully mostly gone now (see, I'm thankful for lots of things!) but I also hurt my neck yesterday and it's still really painful today. I can't bend or turn my neck to the right hardly at all right now, and as I type this, I'm wearing a neck brace. Grr. As if I needed one more thing to deal with. I've already put together one written assignemnt that I have to hand in this week, but there are two other, as well as two presentations still clamouring for my attention. It will be a busy week.

Lori was right. Just tell all your friends you'll see them in a year. I'm so out of touch with everyone, and even taking a minute to post here seems like unwise procrastination. There's just so much to do.

Also, word to the wise, don't get me started on my Future Shop rant. I got my printer back yesterday after two weeks of "servicing" and it's full of fuzz and huge ink tar pits that certainly weren't there before. Not to mention that their advice for my printer that is still under their extended warranty that I bought was to take it to Staples, pay them for a new print head and have them show me how to install it. I'm doing the angry e-mail jig with customer service right now. Looks like I'll be paying to print at school for awhile longer yet. sigh.

Projects I'm currently working on:

• a presentation/lesson on expanding the canon and teaching novels for my English ed class tomorrow morning
• a "Vision for the Year" and syllabus for Socials 10
• a presentation on influence and modeling for my communication class
• 3 essays of the read blarg, blarg, and blarg and write a critical response variety
• a presentation and best practices sheet for teaching depressed children (guilt, right? the secret is guiilt?!)
• a communicative reading (yes, that means you can catch it) of the short story "The Murderer" by Ray Bradbury for my video-camer- happy cohort prof

I think that must be just about everything. Oh, plus staying sane. On the upside, I went to MEC yesterday and got a really nice new backpack, so my shoulders will live happily ever after, freed from the evils of the shoulder bag. Oh, and have you ever played Katamari Damacy? Wooo.

Well, no one has heard from me in weeks and weeks because they've been keeping me so busy, but school is actually going well. My professors (excepting my adolescent development prof, who claims that only 34% of students in grade 12 are cognitively capable of even rudimentary abstract thought, and who should be beaten with a nerf bat) are helpful and I'm learning a lot from them. My social studies curriculum prof is especially good; from him I'm learning how to teach the stuff I actually want to teach: critical thinking, how get students to assess their values and make their own decisions, and so on. Lovely. In my english curriculum class, I've realized how much I'm going to like reading stories to my class (and especially borderline-acceptable poetry).

I got in quite the scrap in my social issues class yesterday. A whole flock of Kerrisdalian, blond, future elementary teachers got all worked up when I suggested that the phrase "discovery of the new world" was racially loaded, eurocentric, and offensive. They liked it even less when I said that presenting American (the continent) history as having started in 1492 when some Spanish guy "found" the place was perpetuating racism and social injustice. And that wasn't even the worst part.

There is now a whole flock of shiny-haired, button nosed, GUESS sweatered, smily happy carpet-song-singing types who give me evil looks whenever I pass for having the gall to suggest that we shouldn't pretend that social hierarchy doesn't exist. We were looking at an exercise in class called "flower power" where kids identify the different aspects of their socially-constructed identity and have them identify (PRIVATELY) in which aspects they are priviledged, and where they are not. The point of the exercise is to help students recognize where inequalities may exist in their relations with others.

It seems the "my shoes smell like chewing gum" crowd believe that it could be okay to have students look at how their marginalised, as long as you're careful about their self-esteem, but it's not appropriate to talk about priviledge. Claimed one girl with perfect skin and teeth, making students see where they're priviledged is unfair because it might make them uncomfortable (OMG!!) and besides they might have other problems like not being good at math, so showing them that they're priviledged is unfair. Plus, as her Loius-Vetton school-bag sporting friend pointed out, if we tell some kids that they're in socially priviledged positions, they might start running around saying they're more powerful and treating the other kids badly. Might START??

Blah. Blogger ate my last rant section, but I'll just condense it into the following: social class is based on how much money you have, not how often you go to the opera. For you to be middle class, only about half of the population can have less money than you, and fully another half must have more.

Better get back to wokr now, if I fall to behind, I might get fed to middle class chihuahuas.