I’ve taken the plunge and decided to incorporate blogging as a requirement in my Filipino American lit class. It took me a while to decide: my hesitation towards it was primarily the students’ internet access, which ultimately wasn’t a problem (only 2 or 3 people didn’t have access from home, but otherwise had it regularly at work).

The other waffling point was the quality of writing. I’ve experimented enough with simple private discussion boards in my classes to know that, despite my warnings, entire responses would still be posted consisting of nothing but “Me too!” or “w00t!” or “LOL.” To make it a graded requirement, and to make it publicly readable, I hope, would force the students to write something more substantive.

But I was pushed towards the blogging option again over the summer after I received my student evaluation comments for the spring. The comments about my “discussion sections” were positive overall, yet I was somehow quite bothered by the few students who demanded more lectures — not because the discussions weren’t a waste of time, but because (paraphrasing one student) “I’d rather just sit back and take notes rather than be forced to talk.”

The comment just brought back everything I hated the most in college: my arm cramping up, filling notebooks with little opportunity for Q&A, pointless exam after pointless exam. When I’m interrupted in mid-lecture (sometimes jokingly — I hope) by students who ask “Will this be on the exam?” I’m worried that the students are already so used to “teaching to the test.” What it promoted, it seemed to me, was a different conception of “studying.” One crams as much stuff as possible into the brain the night before the midterm, closes the book and recites what one has just read, vomits everything onto the bluebook (and don’t even talk to me about multiple-choice Scantron exams — I still have my pride, and refuse to give them, despite my incredible number of students): well, this just isn’t what I want from studying, and it certainly isn’t “learning” either.

So I’ve decided — and I think the students were pleased, although a little apprehensive concerning the upped requirements for class participation — to do away with the exams altogether and concentrate on essay writing and discussion.

Anyhow, here’s the main classroom blog, Flips in Fog City (everyone we’re reading in the class has or had some connection of sorts to the Bay Area). At some point in the next couple of weeks, the students should have their group blogs up. Then we’ll see what happens.

Popularity: 1% [?]

This is, supposedly, Wally Gonzales writing on Speed, Glue and Shinki:

Those people who write the metal rock books some are fucking geeks with univerity diplomas. They laugh at metal while they write about it and take it without any serious expression. One man write slow stoner classic is Bang LP. Shit. Bang is one song band. Other songs of bang like smeard shit on Sabs boot sole. Some slag Grand Funk. Not clever enough. Mark Farner is a clever man with good intention for fans and al;l the people of the world. But no group got close to slow Sabbath stomp like the japanese trio Speed Glue and Shinki. Shinki Chen is the great jimi guitarist, which makes bass player and drummer into speed and glue. Hey great. Drummer is Mr. Joseph Smith of the Philipines. Hey Joe, you the man motherfucker. Like Sir Lord Baltimore singer John Garner, Joseph is also the mean Iggy Ozzy behind that kit. Squarks like MC5 and Blue Cheer and Stooges and hits the traps like he’s punishing the man for building this world for assholes. Slow songs of Speed Glue and Shinki are perhaps the best and occupy in my head the larger place. Big double LP of big donkeys knob hanging and cool. Remember Kiss Hotter than Hell. Slower than those songs. Simple riffs for the moron to play but full of clever lyrics for the wise man to hear. Good combination to like with massive bone on the go and inhale the whole room staring at double LP sleeve of magical tiger with all the world of mystery in its eyes. Good record for studying the words. Get the words of Mr. Joseph Smith 1972. He os the Mother of Fucking Rock here. The words of Sniffing and Snorting say he’s snorting out of the hands of a stgranger. That’s pretty cool I guess. He’s smoking a J on a beutuful day. He took a sip of wine and started loading his gun and shot it in his veins, By the time I pull it out I’m gonna feel so strange. No shit. I feel pretty strange too with I do that. Speed Glue is great when they play fast too, but we ain’t talking about that right now. This double is for Dead george and those guys, you know. Lying in a pool of yourself on some hillside turning in to the earth and sucking up the vegetation and letting weather just happen. This is the fukcin ggroup man, Speed Glue and Shinki. Thankfull ball attention

His review of Amon Duul II’s Tanz der Lemminge is fantastic as well:

For me they are an sect malignant of powerful desart magical and worship, and occupy in my head the larger place. To Amon Duul 2 I will be the lemming, and myself lead astray.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Barb promises me a dirty joke and fails to deliver.

So cheer me up: the person who sends me the best dirty joke, in English or Tagalog — I’m not offering any criteria — in the next few days will get to make a request for an mp3 download. I can’t promise to upload the specific song, so you can ask for a particular theme / artist / genre / whatever. Only three entries maximum per person, now.

And please, no old ones: no “Welcome to Jamaica, have a nice day,” no “Death by Ubanga,” no “Nag-sesecond-thought ho,” no “Sure, just don’t slap me that hard,” no “Anong akala mo sa akin? Alkansiya?,” no “Licklola.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

1. Thanks to Jean and Pat for your comments (no, I haven’t downloaded the mp3 yet, but will in a sec). I am hanging in there, thanks to my friends — you know who you are! — and relatives both far and near. (No, it’s not about health; thankfully those I love are all healthy.)

2. The latest (and last) Guided By Voices album, Half Smiles of the Decomposed, arrived in my mailbox on Monday, and it is a blessed gift from indie-rock heaven. It’s already vaulted into my favorites of the year — see the right-hand column. Lyrically and musically, it’s even stronger than the last GBV-With-Big-Speakers album, Isolation Drills — heck, right now, it feels like it’s already in the GBV top 5 (up there with Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes, Under the Bushes Under the Stars, and Propeller).

As Uncle Bob himself put it: “We are the kings of indie rock. When we quit, indie rock will die.”

3. Now this made me smile. I love the “coconut leaves and kerosene” part, though the article is maddeningly quiet on the ingredients. Did the wedding guests think it was lechon, perhaps?

4. Watching the very first episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus last night. “Nine out of ten British housewives can’t tell the difference between Whizzo butter and a dead crab.”

5. Eric Idle‘s “The FCC Song.”

6. Whoa — Puffy is coming to the Fillmore in October. I have to go.

7. I’m having my friends Lito and Nerissa over for dinner in a few days (then we’re watching The Village, despite the bad reviews), and just by chance, Lito’s poem “Her First Night Away” is open in front of me, as I try to figure out questions for discussion of another one of his poems for class next week.

“For once in this marriage, more than
darkness separated us, more than sleep,
though it’s now daylight where you are.”

Popularity: 1% [?]

It’s 11:57 pm, and it’s the end of the one of the worst days of the worst year of my life. Going online was, I guess, my attempt at pretending things were back to normal, but they’re not.

(No, don’t ask.)

Popularity: 1% [?]