Have you ever been alone in a crowded room when I'm here with you?

Have you ever been alone in a crowded room; well I'm here with you...

"The ‘I’ who results from the process of self-ing, then, acquires an awareness of itself as itself, at the same time that the self gains an awareness of the self as other, as the object of its own regard"
-- Sociology paper

HELL ASS BALLS?! You just feel like finding the author and shoving this sentence in his face and saying "rephrase this to sound normal". Seriously, there should be a course on normalizing scholarly lingo that should be taken by every person who wants to publish something.

So there's a general consensus that teachers are getting overpaid. Still. But really, let's not debate this too harshly. Let's put things in perspective a bit.

So hmm. How many days a year do we work? Well, let's say there are 4 weeks in a month (actually a little bit more, but we'll go with 4). 4 weeks a month, 5 days a week, that's roughly 20 days a month. And we go from Septemeber to June; 10 months, so that's about 200 days. But Christmas break! And March Break! Fine fine, so don't work 200 days a year. Let's say we work 180 days a year. That's 10 months minus 4 weeks. A conservative estimate, but we'll go with 180 days.

Now, how many hours a day do we work? Well, let's forget about course planning, curriculum planning, MARKING, extra-curriculars. Let's just go with the bare minimum time we're in schools. 9 to 4. That's 7 hours. Nah, let's make it 6.5 hours a day cause we get 30 minutes for lunch. So 6.5 hours a day.

Alright, now, how much would you pay me to babysit your kid? Nah, forget about the fact that we're teaching them stuff, enriching their lives, educating them, and all that shazz. I'm talking about bare-bones supervision. Like a babysitter. Forget about my dual degrees and that I'm a professional. How much would you pay a babysitter. $6 an hour? $5? We'll go with $5 an hour. Cause you see, I want to be conservative here. So $5 an hour to babysit your kid.

So $5 an hour at 6.5 hours a day. That's $32.5 a day. So I'm gonna be more generous and round down. $30 a day JUST to babysit your kid. Now, I'm a pretty damn good babysitter. I've got roughly 30 kids in my class. Each kid is being cared for, looked after, and seen as an individual, just like any good babysitter (again, ignoring this teaching business). 30 sets of parents can safely leave their kids to be babysat by me every day. So it's a business right? Those parents should pay me. So 30 kids, at $30 a day, that's... $900 a day. Again, just to babysit them and forget about them when the day ends.

And I do this, like I said, 180 days a year, as a conservative estimate. So let's see, I'm providing 30 families with a babysitting service at $30 a day for 180 days of the year. I should be getting paid... $162,000? Really? Hmm... Well this is interesting.

I'm not so sure I approve of this technique some people use of diffusing a situation by trying to casually talk about something else completely unrelated. I always find that if I disagree with someone on something and we get to a point where it's unresolved, changing the topic tends to cause my response to this new topic to be monosyllabic/snappy.

I always have my inspired moments at night you know. Like, late into nights. One possibility of it is that usually after 11, I stop doing work. Completely; I don't even think about work because it is rather pointless. I don't have to "worry" about work. It gets itself done and I just have to focus my intellectual abilities while actually doing it. Work gets in my way during the day because I always think I should be working but at night, I never think I should be working. I don't. So when I don't have work at least partially on my mind, I can devote myself to brilliant epiphanies. This is also why all my crazy schemes are concocted at night (half of which I either forget in the morning, or lose my nerve by that time). Seriously, if I could act on my ideas at the insane hours that I concoct them... well, I'd be a lot more spontaneous for one and two, my life would be much more interesting. Things always seem more somber in the morning and I always end up realizing that the ideas I come up with at night, which at the time, always seem to unfold perfectly, seem to lose their practicality come dawn. You can never really think of this crazy idea at night and then say to yourself "I'll do it tomorrow/the first chance I get". It really doesn't work that way. Night makes it possible to, if I may quote Andrew McMahon (who else?), spin around things like a dream, and have them play out on a movie screen.

Crazy, but true.

"Kung Hey Fat Choi. That's Chinese for Happy New Year"
-- Radio Commerical

What? No it's not! Aside from the erroneous belief that there is such a language called "Chinese" (what they're referring to here is "Cantonese"), when did Kung Hey Fat Choi start to mean happy new year? Granted, my interpretation of Cantonese is limited but I'm pretty sure Kung Hey Fat Choi means something like good health and good fortune. I'm probably completely wrong on that count but I KNOW it doesn't mean Happy New Year cause I know how to say Happy New Year in Cantonese.

You know something that always amuses me? When artists are writing a song and they say to themselves "This passage is so good musically we'll just go "Na na na na na" or "Doo doo doo doo doo" and to hell with lyrics".

AN ALBUM COVER

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ANAL BUM COVER

The English language has a twisted sense of humor sometimes.

I put off writing my Medieval Literature report until this weekend (due tomorrow) and in the last 2 days, I have banged out 1500 words on medieval clothing. Why did I wait so long to do this paper? Not because of procrastination. Because, get this: I had ethical beef with it. Yes you heard me; I was morally opposed to writing this report because I disagreed with the principles behind writing such a thing. I tried to think of a reason behind WHY I should be writing this report (aside from the fact that it's worth 10% of my mark) and could not think of a single one! Honestly now, what exactly is the point of writing a 5 page report on medieval clothes. I know nothing about medieval clothes so basically, my entire paper's just a bunch of citations glued together with good grammatical structure. Seriously, what does she want me learn from this? If I was interested in medieval clothing, I would go read about it in real sources. Is she testing my summary skills? I'm just reading a bunch of books and regurgitating a precis on what I've read. Hell ass balls is the point of that?

Johan Santana. 6 years, 137.5 million dollars. Holy guacamole. Seriously. Man alive. 137.5 million dollars over the next 6 years to play baseball. Baseball contracts are one of the most mind-boggling monetary exchanges I've ever seen that concerns 1 person's personal income.

February is offically here. January passed quicker than I thought it would.

Still to see:
Wristcutters: A Love Story
The History Boys
Wait Until Dark
Stardust
The Usual Suspects
Ocean's Eleven
Kiss the Girls
Along Came A Spider
Taking Lives
The Changeling
The Karate Kid
The Neverending Story
Bring It On
Signs
The Reaping
The Wedding Singer
Charlie & The Chocolate Factory
License to Wed
Disturbia
King Arthur
Bill
Mean Girls
30 Days of Night

I *am* seeing films at a much faster rate these days. By the end of the year, I'll probably have seen all those on the list above unless for some reason, Classic Video doesn't rent them. I also have a paper due Monday I've not started yet, which means... work on the weekend. Blargh. I never work on the weekends. Not fun.