Been beat up and battered around...

[jobey_in_error]

After randomly falling off the face of the earth, I'm randomly back. And bedraggled. Didn't think when I finally jumped into LJ that I would bring in a whole lot of real life, but you guys are too damn nice and I need a bit of a vent.

Comments

[lady_bracknell]

I don't mind being alone, either. Most of the time I'm too busy to notice there isn't anyone here. The other half's project sounds fun :D.

Good luck with the family! I suggest stocking up on vodka, just in case (but that might just be me, lol).

[litlover12]

VERY good idea. :-) Prayers and good wishes coming your way, Jobey.

[jobey_in_error]

Thank you very ♥

So what do you think of hip-hop Shakespeare? You are one of the people I was fairly sure would be less enchanted, but I could be mistaken too.

[litlover12]

I don't mind stuff like that, as long as the attitude is "Let's have some fun with Shakespeare!" and not "Shakespeare is too hard; let's dumb him down."

What I really can't stand is techno updates of classical music. Or something like that Handel's Messiah update that started out being classical and then suddenly switched to pop or rock or whatever it was. I had to dance to that in a college dance show, and it used to annoy the heck out of me. I kept wanting to say, "It's freakin' Handel, people! It doesn't NEED to be updated!" The problem with that sort of thing, IMO, is that it gives the impression that we all just listen to classical music out of duty, but we can only REALLY get into it if they suddenly start throwing modern sounds into it. Which is so not true.

[apple_pathways]

First of all: thanks for the pimpage, and for diving into the meme! It is much appreciated.

Second: I like being alone to a scary degree as well. I lived alone (with a cat, no less) in a studio apartment for three years, and if I didn't have class or work or one of my friends didn't drag me out into the fresh air, I would sometimes spend days without talking to anyone and not even notice. Pretty sure that's not healthy, but whatever!

Now that I live with my parents (complicated families? Yes. But I won't go into it!) I crave those rare few hours when they actually leave the house and leave me alone!

Have fun with your mom and brother! The fact that you haven't seen them in a year should help you all get along for the first five days at least. ;)

[jobey_in_error]

First of all: MOST DEFINITELY. Hey, I have a book rec already, and it was for a book I actually have in the apt! How to beat that??

Second (of all): This is probably not an uncommon theme on LJ. (Though your cat is a particularly good touch. I take it a step further... I dislike animals. And naturally Mr. J. ADORES dogs and wants about six of them.) And I admire your fortitude because, having escaped it, I'm not sure I could handle living at home and hanging onto the spare hour here and there.

But I do intend to have as much fun as possible with them! Now if only that famous Santa Barbara sun wasn't AWOL...

Third of all: I don't suppose there's any chance you're still working on the poem of awesome? Either way, we must have another writing session ;)

[apple_pathways]

Working on the poem? Eh, not much lately! I really need a plan of attack to get the damn thing done. Perhaps a change of setting? I'm making my weekly trip to the library tomorrow: perhaps I'll bring a notebook along and fuss with it there. I tend to work better when surrounded by books and other studious people!

But anyway, yes: a writing session is definitely in order! If not for the poem, definitely for the fanfic commitments I seem to have made despite my vow not to make any more fanfic commitments! {For the one, I'm co-mod of the comm that's running the fest, so: yeah. Pretty much had to commit to a fic! For the other: I blame roh_wyn and my feminine pride, in that order! (It's for femgenficathon, which looks really cool.) I also want to write something else for the ficathon at spoiler_song, just 'cause it's a lovely fest, and my brain is brimming with ideas now that we know that (SPOILER) River Song is Amy and Rory's daughterI love dogs! But they're too much work. I like my cat, because I leave her alone for the weekend, and when I come back, she'

[jobey_in_error]

Oh no, that fanfic-commitment vacation didn't last too long!

Though even as someone as unpopcultured as me (who doesn't even feel spoilered by the spoiler) has to say that the crossover with, what, Sherlock and River Tam* sounds pretty amazing.

*If I have that right

[evilhippo]

CERN, eh? I can only conclude that you have excellent taste in other halves. CERN is cool (even when birds destroy it with bread. And when they inevitably end the world

[jobey_in_error]

... is there a movie about CERN I should know about? Or is that a news item? Now that I think about it, the birds are vaguely ringing some sort of bell...

I've been using that program's vocabulary lists by grade all year as a tutoring resource. Now that the school year's over and I have too much any-at-all free time on my hands, I noticed that their pride and joy seems to be this Shakespeare project.

And it's a great relief that I'm not the only one who thought the music actually sounded authentic! (It doesn't seem to vary that much, though, not in the three samples I heard.) To be sure the content can be a bit lame... in the vocabulary raps the singer and his bestest friends do all sorts of 'nerdy overachiever' stuff, like make sci-fi monster movies with the family camcorder. And the John Madden thing went under my radar but I started having second thoughts in the Shakespeare song when we had "Robin Goodfellow" and "Robin Williams" in the same line. There is a whole list of subjects that Robin Williams's name should be nowhere

[shimotsuki]

Since I had an essentially LJ-free week, I'm late to the party, and suspect you're in the thick of the family visit now -- hope that's going well, or at least okay.

As for Shakespeare, in my (almost literally all-white) high school, the coolest English teacher always made his freshmen memorize one of a set of Shakespeare soliloquies and perform them in class. (Irrelevant side note: my best friend and I did this: "I have of late comma but wherefore I know not comma lost all my mirth comma forgone all custom of exercises colon...") A group of about five white boys did "She walks in beauty like the night" rap-style, with finger-snapping for the beat, and it worked. Obviously, as this happened in 1985 and I can still remember it.

[jobey_in_error]

It seems you had to memorize Shakespeare and others? (Wonderfully) hard-core for freshman secondary English!

I'm personally a fan of... all the Shakespeare rap currently under discussion ;) For several reasons, with my remedial students I put a lot of emphasis on rereading and memorizing. Slow down; go deeper before we go broader.

Re: visit. Thanks very much, it just ended today, and it went okay--or even better. I think I need to recover a bit before trying to talk about it, though.

How was Germany? ♥

[shimotsuki]

That English teacher was amazing. He was voted Teacher of the Year for the whole (small) state one year. I really wanted to get him again in 11th grade, which was the other curriculum he taught, but no luck. :/

If I've asked you this before, I apologize for the sieve-like memory, but what age group(s) do you teach?

Glad the visit went okay. Close quarters for several days with family can be a trial, even under the best of circumstances.

Germany was great! I'm frantically sorting photos and hope to post some soon.