Graduation Day

The golden age of slasher movies was sometime between the late seventies and the early to mid-eighties. But as much as it was a golden age for the genre it was also, unapologetically, a gold rush. Producers and studios scrambled to churn out films to capitalize on the audience's hunger for "dead teenager" movies. Graduation Day is great example of a slasher movie made in that spirit. It's very by-the-numbers. The inciting incident takes place at a high school track meet, where a hard-ass coach barks orders at a runner during a race. After she crosses the finish line she collapses and dies. Two months later, just before graduation day, a black gloved killer stalks and kills the rest of the track team. Needless to say, this movie isn't especially memorable or original. It doesn't even have any particularly good kills. If anything, it's really only memorable for featuring Linnea Quigley and Vanna White.

Rating: 45%

(Image from IMDB)

The Krotons

The Krotons is a bit of a disappointment. Following The Mind Robber and The Invasion, The Krotons is just too formulaic. It's very similar to The Dominators and a few of the other unimaginative "base under siege" stories. The Doctor and his companions arrive on a planet populated by the Gonds and their mysterious overlords, the Krotons. Centuries earlier the Gonds and the Krotons were at war but they have since settled into an uneasy truce. The Krotons use their advanced technology to educate the Gonds, asking only that the smartest of the Gonds become their "companions." The Doctor soon discovers that these "companions" are used up and disposed of by the Krotons, while the rest of the Gonds are kept in the dark. Will the Doctor solve the mystery of the Krotons and stop them before it's too late? Yes, yes he will. Also, the Krotons look like really crappy versions of Robby the Robot.

Rating: Zoe is something of a genius. Of course it can be very irritating at times%

Waiting for "Superman"

Waiting for "Superman" is an Oscar nominated documentary about public education in America. Though I can't vouch for how accurate it might be, having never gone to school in the US, it is a well-made documentary. The use of twinkly piano music and images of disappointed children will probably make you feel bad, but Waiting for "Superman" doesn't seem to be going for an all-out weep-a-thon. While some might argue that the documentary is biased towards charter schools, it's likely that most will agree that there is room for improvement in public education. Also, children are, like, our future and stuff, or something.

Rating: 73%

(Image from thebabycupcakes.blogspot.com)

A Month of Boring Things - Day Twenty-Two: Rankings

Ranking things is sometimes good. College football, for instance. And what about the Army, hmmmm? You ever think of that? But mostly when we say we've "ranked" something, we really mean we've classified stuff we like and/or hate according to some made-up system that's total bullshit, i.e., The Beatles are the greatest band ever followed by the Rolling Stones followed by The Silver Bullet Band, etc. Ranking involves all sorts of science and math and whathaveyou. Which is boring. So fuck it I love you.


Rating: I cannot rate rankings--that'd be silly. So I'll end this with a Q & A.

Q: Do the people who go around ranking things and then showing off their rankings foresee the storm of shit that begins when they make their rankings public?

A: You bet your sweet sweet can they do.

A Month of Boring Things - Day Twenty: Academics

Academics like to complain. A lot. If you ask one of them to teach a 4:4 or a 5:5 or, as I did last year, a 6:3, they might vomit a little bit of bile into their complete-with-snarky-comment-on-the-outside coffee mugs. Is it somewhat soul crushing to spend your time explaining something you're passionate about to 15-40 terminally bored teenagers? Of course. Is your pay fairly lousy, your field of research generally unappreciated and even reviled by the general populace, and your very existence distrusted by the hoi polloi? Yes. But, shit. If you tripled your weekly in-class time, you'd still be spotting my father fourteen hours. Also, those bizarre eccentricities that make you lovable and unique within the Ivory Tower are often illegal in the real world, and worthy of layoff.


Rating: 65%

The Anti-Obama Demonstration

Overheard at Anti-Obama demonstration:

"Nine-eleven was our borning!"

"Abortion is white slavery!"

At first I thought that maybe these champions of the free market were so busy boning up on their Austrian economics that they missed a spelling test or two, but then I just gave up. I kinda hope that Obama does outlaw freedom, and that his first big education reform involves a mandatory IQ test hooked up to an electric chair. Or at the very least a law that says Americans have to feed their kids something other than paint chips and gravy.

RATING: Free World%

(Image from lookatthisfuckingteabagger.com.)

Fun with Anglish

Post-colonialism makes ESL humour problematic, and if Foucault was right about knowledge and power then most teachers are stooges anyway, but goddamn, non-native speakers of English say some funny things. For example...

CZECH GIRL IN CLUB: I know you like me.
MY FRIEND ROBIN: How can you tell?
GIRL: I can feel your pee against my leg.

or...

MAREK (Czech): "If I can't drive, I'll have to hedgehog" (hitchike).

SALAMA (Libyan): "The Muslims [sic] fanatics are dangerous, but Christmas fanatics can be just as bad."

SAD (Libyan, or maybe Sudanese): "Every morning I get up and then I get up my wife."

My all time favorite, however, isn't an anecdotal knee slapper, but an unassuming workhorse that always gets in under the radar, and has probably shown up in 60-80 different stories, papers, and journal entries that I've corrected over the years:

"Nice to meat you!"

Never fails to make me chuckle.

RATING: Anglo-saxon mongrel horde overruns the world%

(Image from eslfunland.com.)

Bloom's Taxonomy of R3

Most teachers are functionally illiterate, which is what you call it when you don't ever read, except maybe comic books on the toilet or poetry. Because of this, they need lots of diagrams and pictures to make sense of anything, so this guy Benjamin Bloom decided to draw this pyramid way back in 1956 that's supposed to explain how people learn or something and now schools all over the country have to use it. Whatever, Poindexter, all you need to worry about is that "evaluation" is at the top of the pile, which proves R3 is way smarter than you and your mom.

RATING: Bloom's Taxonomy: Psychobabble%
R3: 1000%

(Image from www.officeport.com. All joking aside, the tendency of elementary and high school teachers to read Bloom's taxonomy as a kind of "pecking order" of learning rather than a nested, concentric hierarchy is one of a dozen or so reasons why North American schools are among the worst in the civilized world.)

Grading

I used to really despise grading when I only had to grade two classes worth of papers (around fifty at UH). But now I have five classes worth, which totals up to somewhere around one hundred and twenty papers. Yowzers! It works out to about fourteen hours of reading through lazy, underdeveloped writing by students who have systematically been taught that rigorous thought is valueless, and the best way to get through any assignment is the simplist possible formula. Also I just read that kids are now less likely to finish high school than their parents. Thank you, goodnight!

RATING: 21%

Cultivating Humanity by Martha Nussbaum

"As Ellsion says, forming the civic imagination is not the only role for literature, but it is one salient role. Narrative art has the power to make us see the lives of the different with more than a casual tourist's interest--with involvement and sympathetic understanding, with anger at our society's refusals of visibility. We come to see how circumstances shape the lives of those who share with us some general goals and projects; and we see that circumstances shape not only people's possibilities for action, but also their aspirations and desires, hopes and fears. All of this seems highly pertinent to the decisions we must make as citizens. Understanding, for example, how a history of racial stereotyping can affect self-esteem, achievement, and love enables us to make more informed judgments on issues relating to affirmative action and education" (Nussbaum 88, italics mine.)

Martha Nussbaum writes like an affirmative action hire. I think she needs a double shot of that "liberal education" she's always talking about.

RATING: 15%, or 65% if you're a card-carrying democrat with a head injury.

(Image from www.justbooks.co.uk.)