The year in review, in micro-blog form. Over 1600 tweets covering the year; nearly 4.5 tweets per day on average. This is mostly for my own reference, but, you might be bored enough to look at this as well. Who knows! Continue reading Tweets of 2011
Let me begin by thanking Scott, Lucy, Randy, and Sheryl for their help yesterday. Without them, the party that followed my graduation ceremony could not have gone anywhere nearly as smoothly and a relatively hectic and busy day would have been infinitely more chaotic and stressful. Of course, that is pretty much the theme of the achievement that I’m celebrating—to paraphrase the Beatles, I got by with a little help from my friends.
I know it is the standard cliche…“blah blah couldn’t have done it without my friends and family blah blah,” but nothing could be more literally true than that. Each and every one of you—all family by varying definitions—played an integral part in the creation of this achievement, and you should all be proud. Everyone suffered; my poor, beleaguered children bore the brunt of five years of me being tired, distracted, stressed, and busy, and they did it while finding countless ways to ease our collective burden for example. My wife walked into this relationship IN THE MIDDLE of all of the stress, looked around, and said, “Yeah, why not, I’m in.” Next time you are mistakenly thinking your significant other is the best, remember that Ger not only tolerates all that goes into the hot mess that is me, not only does she tolerate that all at my absolute ball-of-stress worst, but she does it without ever having seen me at my now-we-can-relax best1.
All of you have been amazing though. Each one of you that has, for years, gone out of your way to make your schedules fit my lunacy. All of you who have braved my calendar’s oppressive, colorful, and packed pages in order to set up dinner plans or a meeting for an event. Those among you who have dealt with cranky Jer, tired Jer, not-entirely-coherent Jer, and finding-his-stress-relief-at-the-expense-of-strangers-in-social-situations Jer because, in theory, there’s a fun to be around Jer somewhere in the mix too—despite the growing infrequency of his appearances.
Let me not ignore the fact that many of you have at times shown support in tangible ways too! Some of you have helped bridge financial gaps, been a sounding board when I wanted to pull heads off others, or have just been a set of helping hands when the number of balls I have kept in the air2 proved to be a few too many for even me.
So I mean it when I say that you should all pat yourself on the back, because all I did was the homework3, you guys made a college graduate. Congratulations. Now…about these student loans…
After having snarked my way through the entire first movie, “Twilight”, with just my wife to share my pain, I decided to share a bit more…expansively?…with the Intarwebs. Randy, Sheryl, Ger and I set up camp at the Castle and plodded our way through the flick while I live-tweeted my snark. The result is what is found below posted—in order—with time stamps based on movie-start (so that, if you happened to be a masochist, you could follow along).
Oh, my mini review? It sucked. It sucked only marginally less than did the first movie, which is like saying the Spanish Inquisition sucked less than the Crusades, because of the classy red hats (clearly, my knowledge of history is plucked straight from Monty Python, so please don’t confuse me by supplying corrections.) This movie sucked in a way that only another movie that closely adheres to a book that sucks could suck. It sucks in epic, painful, and entirely unfunny ways. Even if it were a sucky B-movie, I could stand watch again with friends to mock…I am unlikely to ever give this movie such treatment. It is more than it deserves. It is decidedly not good. I give it 13 thumbs down. Even if it were reshot with Kristen Stewart nude throughout, it would not be watchable.
Okay, the last bit is uncalled for…I would totally watch that. I love your Kristen Stewart, you and your emotionless face. I forgive you.
Anyway…without further ado, let’s get to the tweets: Continue reading Twilight “New Moon” in 73 Tweets
Gonna make a change
For once in my life
It’s gonna feel real good
Gonna make a difference
Gonna make it right
–Michael Jackson, “Man in the Mirror”
The problem is, I bought into my own myth.
I have been slugging along accomplishing—DOING—for so long that I began to believe the tales of my own legendary productivity. Apparently, somewhere, there was a campfire around which people sat and spun yarns in hushed tones of Jer Lance, indefatigable doer of things and achiever of objectives. Far and wide, these stories spread, so when things needed doing, I would get an email in my inbox or a mention at a party…just this little thing that needs doing. “Email it to me and I’ll look into it,” I would say; and I would. All of them. Every single one.
Now, it just so happens that I am fairly well connected. I am not sure how it happened, but after a few short years around Michigan fandom, I hang out with or communicate with the people who make so many of the local (and to a lesser degree, non-local) conventions and events happen that I tend to have a pretty good informal relationship with them. As a result, I have a pretty effective track record of finding a solution to those ‘little things that need doing’ that get brought to me, so the legend grows.
And it is entirely my fault, because—as I started this out by stating—I bought into my own myth. I came to genuinely believe that I could survive endlessly on 4 hours of sleep and no actual breaks. I have been under the illusion that using my relaxation time as time to pretend to relax while secretly working would actually fool my body and my mind into thinking that I’ve really been socializing when I have been doing anything but. I legitimately convinced myself that running an audio broadcast at a party was the same thing as socially hanging out at a party. In the universe of people who have hugely sold themselves a bill of goods, I am a hall of famer, and it has exhausted me. I am now just fundamentally incapable of being that guy. I have finally hit that wall, a wall that I have been warned about time and again but never truly believed I could hit—I am a fucking legend, remember? My response time is getting slower. Things are slipping by. I am taking on less and less, but still not able to accomplish it. My legendary 4 hours of sleep has stretched to 6, and I’m still left waking each morning feeling entirely unawake. My relentless productivity is flagging and my mythical 16-hour, full-court-press attacks on mounds of work have softened to 2 hour micro-bursts interrupted by thirty minutes of staring like a zombie into space trying to muster a combination of will-power and coherent thought.
I am failing. I am failing you guys and I am failing me. Worse, I am failing and beating myself up about it considerably; nobody has been as hard on me about this as I have been. I am working harder than ever and getting far less done. I am genuinely upset with my body for needing so much sleep. I get so frustrated I want to cry when I can only find the creativity and ability to write so rarely that I am almost never at a keyboard when it happens; so much is left unwritten. I want to punch things when my mind doesn’t have the acumen to make the sharp, decisive leaps that it was capable of a year ago. I am so unbelievably angry with myself for not having enough will power to just FORCE MYSELF to work my way through my to-do list. This is who I am, why can I not be that person now? Last night, while trying to get some of the massive pile of work I had before me completed, I was forced by my body to lie down on a couch at a friend’s house in the middle of a crowd of people and take a brief (oh, oh so very brief it felt) nap. I woke, and still was so wiped that I could get nothing done. I was near tears for the hour I spent dropping my son off at his mother’s place because of the frustration, the tiredness, the soreness, and the hopelessness of not being able to do what it is that I do.
It is taking a toll on my health, too. I am eating healthier than ever, but my body is falling apart. I am getting random nose bleeds. I have gotten even fatter despite a healthier diet and cutting out most fast food. The persistent headache that has gone on almost entirely uninterrupted for a couple of years now has now become stronger and added to its repetoire the combination of occasional spots in my vision and waves of nausea. I am cranky. I am frustrated when I have to explain what I need from people more than once. My low-grade level of dickishness has turned into full-on assholery when dealing with the people that frustrate me. My tolerance for ineptitude has waned to near non-existant levels.
I am not even me, anymore…I am some critically exhausted, pathetic simulacrum of me. And when I say exhausted, I am not talking about the standard ‘I am in need of a night of uninterrupted sleep or a weekend off’ I keep talking about. No, I am ‘I need to make functional life changes before I collapse in on myself like an imploding star, with all of the requisite fireworks that coincide with such an event.’ So I need to make some kind of change. Last night, Ger and I discussed exactly what that change is going to have to be.
I need to stop taking on the little shit. As I evaluated where my time goes, that was the big thing that stuck out…none of the hats that I wear are specifically time consuming. Work, School, Penguicon 2010, Penguicon 2011, ConFusion 2011, and AASFA are all relatively time-light. They each have their moments, but those moments rarely flare up all at once. No, what beats me down is the steady flow of ‘little things that need doing’, both externally and internally. So I need to divide all of my tasks into things that will remain, things that I am quashing or delaying indefinitely, things I will add, and things that I haven’t really decided about yet. To that end:
Things that stay:
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Things I am delaying indefinitely (but certainly until the summer) include:
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Things that I am adding:
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Things I am unsure about right now:
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So there we are. Hopefully, this will help…I know sharing it has helped lift a load from my chest that I’ve been carrying for quite a while now in relative silence (or, at least, as much silence as I have ever been capable of), so by that measure, it is already a success. Thankfully, my wife has agreed to be my gatekeeper on new tasks, by which I basically mean that when I think about taking on a new task, she has undertaken the job of saying “No!” or to forward me a link back to this so that I can avoid being stupid. This is going to be a good thing. It is going to make me happier, more productive, and hopefully healthier…
…but I still want to be super-me again. :(
Why is it that people with beliefs that I respect so often don’t actually practice those beliefs? I am time and again frustrated and upset by people that express a core belief structure that really resonates with me…something with which I really connect…time and again I find myself disillusioned by those same people.
Yesterday, an author and female that I respect as something of a self-professed feminist posted this picture with the associated text as follows: “This is the single manliest image evar. @justbeast’s dad at age 18”.
If you don’t immediately see the problem, don’t fret—it took me several minutes to recognize what the nagging in the back of my mind was trying to make apparent. Ultimately, what did it for me was to switch up the genders a bit, as I did in a follow-up tweet: “THIS is the portrait of femininity… http://twitpic.com/vo9q6…” with a link to picture of my wife in a classic ‘female’ gender role situation…holding a laundry basket.
You see, regardless of which genders’ stereotypes you are upholding, it sucks. It doesn’t just suck for that gender, either. I have a number of close friends with any of a number of gender identity disorders ranging from merely enjoying wearing clothes outside of those assigned to their gender to full on dysphoria, and when you draw gender lines like that—intense gaze, furrowed brow, cigarette gripped before face equals masculinity—it reinforces something hurtful to those people. Just as important, you can’t reinforce only one boundary on the gender-identity continuum; it doesn’t work that way. No, when you reinforce that masculinity is the milieu for a hawk-like stare into the distance while enjoying a cigarette, you reinforce that femininity isnot associated with that. When you say that picture is manly, you imply that women who look this way or do these things are somehow being manly. You also imply that men who do not are not manly.
And really, if we are all about breaking down the gender stereotypes, don’t we really owe it to ourselves to shatter them in both directions? Especially if we acknowledge that breaking them down in one direction really solves nothing? I mean, I think we can all agree that ridding ourselves of the notion that pink is ‘girlie’ does us little good if we retain the notions that pink is not manly, but blue is. What good is making ‘women should be cooks and maids’ a thing of the past if we cling to ‘men should be firemen and police officers’? What good is saying that it is wrong to say that real women do this if we are running around saying that real men do this?
So I pointed this out to the feminist in question, assuming that she merely hadn’t thought it through…and it was dismissed in a way that was amusingly…well, I would have to say the best description for how it was dismissed was in true masculine fashion: “for contemporary definitions of such, it is. Now, add that the man in the picture spent his spare time in Kazakhstan knitting. Still manly.” I refer to this as a masculine evasion because I see the same responses belittled on feminist forums constantly when men are called on their sexist terminology for saying things like “man up”, “don’t be a pussy”, or “grow some balls” and respond with things like “it’s just an expression, it doesn’t actually mean that men are braver or bolder than women”. It sounds thin and transparent when we do it, and it’s equally transparent when it’s done by women. It was with this poor rationale in mind that I included my disclaimer in my example tweet above; instead of just saying that my wife with a laundry basket was truly feminine, I added this caveat: “(Don’t worry ladies, it’s not misogynist…she reads Bitch magazine!!)”
So those are the rules of the game—rules which will now be my go-to anti-sexism spray. Whenever I am about to say something overtly sexist and gender-stereotype-reinforcing, I will be sure to point out that I’m only doing so from the perspective of ‘contemporary definitions’ and that it doesn’t matter, because in some untargeted aspect of my subject they break gender roles.
This is why, although I consider a great many feminist goals and ideologies important, I do not identify as a feminist anymore. I identify as a humanist (at least from a gender and racial standpoint). I feel like the goal of third-wave feminism has shifted from breaking down gender stereotypes and barriers that prevent equality to some agenda that I neither believe in nor entirely understand. Sadly, that seems to be the feeling of a lot of would-be feminists that find themselves unable to stomach the current politics of the movement; or the current evasions.
Edited to Add:
I recognize that this is almost assuredly going to be perceived as a personal attack. Things like this always are. There is nothing I can do about that. I considered for several hours how I could write this without directly addressing the photos in question and ultimately decided that without the context of the actual situation, the discussion loses a great deal of impact; too much impact for my liking. So, what you have is this; potential for hurt feelings and all. I will have to live with that. I would only ask that readers do two things for me before getting too terribly butt-hurt on the author’s behalf:
Today marks seven consecutive years free from drugs and alcohol. Eighty-four months. Three-hundred, sixty-four weeks. Two-thousand, five-hundred, fifty-seven days. Over sixty thousand hours. Over three and one-half million minutes.
That is, as a friend said to me, a long time without a beer.
Last night, in search of something to play as background noise while I tried to fall asleep, I turned on the most trite and easily ignored thing I could find; I put on Confessions of a Shopaholic. I ended up staying awake throughout the entire thing, but I couldn’t put my finger on why. It wasn’t until Isla Fisher made a statement near the end that I could figure it out; it was because the movie’s treatment of addiction really had some resonant moments amidst the goofy action and lame plot points.
The statement in question was (and forgive me, as I’m quoting this from memory here)
When I shop, the world gets better, and the world is better, but then it’s not, and I need to do it again.
Simple, but ridiculously accurate to boot. When I was using, I used to make the world that I saw better. When I began, better merely meant more fun or more exciting, and that is an easy mark to hit. Hell, when you are teen, anything makes the world more exciting. So I drank, smoked pot, dropped acid, ate shrooms, smoked banana peels and various kitchen spices, and generally did whatever I could not to have to face the day without chemical help. It made the world better in my eyes. Then I’d sober up and have to start again.
This is the part where the narrative degenerates into the story of progression; where I needed more and more just to feel good. I won’t bore you with the details, but recognize that it is a cliche for a reason. Things do progress. In my life they progressed to a point where I was getting loaded just to make life tolerable—and by all measures, my life should already have been tolerable. Hell, my life was better than tolerable; I was making a considerable amount of money, I had a nice place to live in a nice neighborhood, two great kids, the physical trappings of suburban life, friends, hobbies, a senior level office job at which I had earned the respect of my co-workers…yet nearly every night I got trashed to make the world better.
So the movie was uncomfortable to watch, because while it showed all of those addict moments in a humorous light, it still showed them. I share pretty liberally from my life as a dope-fiend; but I tend to share the stories that are humorous (at least in hindsight) and not the stories of desperation and shame. It isn’t that I am embarrassed by them so much as they do not make for great party stories, but those stories are readily accessible in my mind. You don’t forget stuff like that. You can’t forget it, even if you try (and believe me, there are times that the using is simply to help you forget this stuff, and that doesn’t work either), so it remains there for you to deal with.
It is so hard to forget because it isn’t some external stuff that happens to you, it is a pervasive, aggressive feeling of helplessness. I could never impart to you the phobic feeling that comes with addiction; like love, you have to feel it to understand it. You have to know that you should not take the next hit—know it to the very core of your being—then you have to rationalize taking it anyway. You have to convince yourself to do it all the same; using trickery, manipulation, and lies on yourself. And make no mistake, you know that you have just lied. You have to come to an agreement with yourself that you are going to overlook that lie, that you are going to believe your own pathetic rationalization, because it is the only way not to hate yourself for what you are about to do. Then you take that hit, and you go ahead and hate yourself anyway; because the agreement that you made doesn’t make you stupid—you know that your excuses were bullshit. So you live with that, too. You live with the knowledge that you are too pathetic, worthless, and weak to stop using, and you hold onto that until you feel worthless and weak enough to do it all again.
You have to know the feeling of sitting in front of a drink trying to come up with some rationale that will allow you to consume it despite the fact that you have promised everyone you love that you are done and that you have it under control. You see, as an addict, there was never a doubt that I would take the drink, but I had to find some reason that would allow me to do it without being obliterated by the guilt. I DESERVE this drink for putting up with my wife’s shit (amusingly enough, her shit was usually about my drinking, go figure…). I am OWED this drink by a world that puts too much pressure on me. Why shouldn’t I have it, I mean, I’m an adult, right? Then once you have selected your excuse, and once you have agreed to ignore how trite it is as far as excuses go, you can go ahead and take the plunge. The upside is, the more drinks you have, the easier it is to convince yourself of the legitimacy of your excuse; of course, sometime you will sober up, but that is a problem for future you.
The simple fact is, as I ultimately learned, you can never drug yourself up enough, have enough sex, buy enough stuff, or eat enough to make the your perception of the world better. At a certain point though, you recognize that fact, but the world is so intolerable by that time without any chemical “enhancement” that there is no way to just stop. So you continue along in a self-reinforcing cycle of doing things that make you hate yourself more so that you use more to mask the self-loathing so that you hate yourself even more so that you use more…well, you see where I am going here.
So today marks the anniversary of a moment in my life that is amongst my proudest: the first day I stopped using and did not pick back up again. Seven years ago today, I sat on my front porch crying because I had not yet used that day, but I was on the verge of doing so anyway. I was physically shaking from the horror of my certain knowledge that in a few minutes I was going to get up, wander to the cupboard, and get a drink. On this day seven years ago, instead of going to the cupboard, I gave a friend a ride to a 12-step meeting (you know, entirely for his sake, because I certainly didn’t have a problem or anything). Seven years ago today I clung to my sobriety with knuckles as white as printer paper and only noticed years later that my grip had slowly relaxed; that blind obstinance had turned into a way of life. That I was no longer merely not using, but actually recovering. Seven years distant from the trenches of what is known as “active addiction” (a fancy term for the time spent actually using).
So today is something of a dichotomy for me, as much somber retrospection as holiday. It is a celebration of seven years of freedom from actively pursuing my various addictions to be certain, but it is also a day of reminder for me. It is rough, remembering the people I hurt, the things that I have done, and the feelings I felt through over a decade of abusing drugs and alcohol; but it sure feels nice to have stopped being that person. Today, I will celebrate my clean-time, and I will strive to make the rest of the year my time of remembrance.
Now, to quote my friend Dave, back to working on getting day two-thousand, five-hundred, fifty-eight…
Wow, I’m married!
Seriously, that is just now beginning to settle in. I am a lucky, lucky guy. It is a pretty safe bet that I would not put up with, from a spouse, anywhere near the amount that Ger puts up with from me, so… lucky… you see? And now, the story of the wedding, in narrative form…
On Wednesday, I swung by the rental place and picked up the tuxedos for Cody and I. We each tried ours on before we even left the store because I refuse to have to get problems solved later, when I’m not present. I’m especially glad I did so, given the problems others in the party had with getting theirs to fit. Cody’s jacket was a bit snug, so we had them slide the button out a bit and all was well. Ultimately, we made an early night of things because it was pretty obvious that given the amount on our plates for the next several days, sleep was not going to happen much.
Let me tell you a little bit about Thursday. First, I’m an idiot, and if anyone tells you otherwise, they are lying. I way…WAY overbooked myself. Thursday I went to work early so I could study for that day’s final exam(!!?!), after which I immediately went to said exam. It could have gone worse. I raced home, finished packing, and by 2pm Ger, the kids, and I were all at the hotel. Ger and the bellhop brought all of our stuff upstairs (and helped ConChair Matt Arnold muscle much of the con stuff into the storage room) while I settled some problems at the front desk.
Families came in and we did a quick “rehearsal” of what was going to happen then went to a very crowded dinner at Bob Evans. Dinner was remarkably more fun than I’d expected despite several bumps in the road (like having one meal served sometime after everyone else had eaten… that was fun.)
The remainder of the early evening was spent alternately dealing with hotel issues related to the convention and doing all of the last minute work for the wedding itself. The evening was spent setting up and testing all of the music sets, writing and rewriting a script and timing cues for our master of ceremonies, revising my vows for the millionth time, and entertaining not one but two families. The last job is the one I feel I did the most poorly on, and I am a bit apologetic for that. If the temporal proximity of wedding and convention detracted from anything, in my eyes, it was from time spent with family that traveled a great distance to see the event. My apologies. Due to a last-minute line-up change, I took a break in the middle of the prep to go over things with our new officiant. Once I was relatively confident in my prep, I finally retired for the night.
Next came the big day. Seriously…what can I say?
I was up by around 6am on Friday to make sure things started off well, and was running around like an idiot by 8am. The photographers showed up around 9:30 to capture some of the setup and dress-up…and let me say, Greg and Jennifer rocked. I felt bad for Greg, especially, as he had to try to sprint around a convention with me snapping photos until I (way too late in the day) got around to tux-ing up.
Once we were all set, we had ourselves a wedding. In every way, it was just what we were hoping for. It was gorgeous, casual, fun, and it had a bit of us in it. I don’t remember everything that happened, but some highlights include me forgetting about Orvan’s ring delivery and being genuinely confused when he wandered down the aisle, whipping out the phone for that special look of horror on Ger’s face, power eating cupcakes, and finding out as we walk onto the floor that Ger doesn’t know how to dance (my favorite quote…“Seriously? You were a dancer though?”… “Well, I could do a pirouette if you want…”).
I’m sure Ger will have more to say on the topic of the ceremony and reception itself, I’m just glad it came off well. I really enjoy planning these sorts of things, and it really was a good time. That having been said, though, I could not have done it without a ton of help and tons of folks, so I would like to take some time to say some Thank Yous to some very important people without whom the entire process would not have happened (or would have, but far less smoothly, amounts to much the same thing.) These are in somewhat random order, forgive me.
I’ll probably have to add to this list as time goes, because I *KNOW* I’m missing a million people, but for now, this is what it is. Thank you all.
For a relatively intelligent guy, I make a lot of stupid mistakes. This also holds true when it comes to my parenting style (if, by “style”, we mean “series of not well thought out choices”). It is because of these that each year I jokingly suggest that I am not a likely candidate for Father of the Year. Here are the top 15 reasons why this year is not looking good…
If Found, Please Call…
While at the Renaissance Festival, it was pointed out to me that many of the other parents had written their phone numbers on a sticker on their child. Not to be outdone, I wrote my phone number and the phrases “Do Not Rape” and “No Kidnapping” in permanent black sharpie on both children on their arms and stomach. Sharpies are, as it turns out, more permanent that one would think.
Cody’s Giant Head
I’m sure that there is a special place in hell for people that purposely try to make someone else self conscious about a part of their body. I’m sure that the part of hell set aside for parents that do it to their children must be extra specially horrific. (But damn, look at the boy’s head!)
Tricking Children into Swearing
I am absurdly amused by the sound of swearing coming from my children, so much so that I get crazy enjoyment out of trying to trick them into swearing. They are too old for my favorite (having them sound out the spelled out version of a naughty word), but there is always value in the attempt. Most recently, that attempt has been in the form of foreign words and phrases.
Birthday Slaps
In 2006, an episode of “How I Met Your Mother” changed the lives of my children and I in a very specific (and ultimately painful) way. It started the birthday slap bet. Now, a good parent certainly wouldn’t allow his children to beat him about the face and neck in excess of thirty times, nor return the favor; but it is so funny. To be honest, this is probably the last year of the event; frankly, the kids are too damned big, and this shit is beginning to HURT.
Adam Sandler is Rarely Appropriate
Sitting around the table laughing at funny songs, everyone remembers the “Chanukah Song” (all three versions) and the “Thanksgiving Song” is safe enough; but what happens when you forget and queue up “At a Medium Pace” for the kids? What happens is they get the lyrics:
“Spit on your hand and stroke my cock at a medium pace,
play with my balls and tell me how big they are…
before you get a chance to hit stop. That was a great moment for us all.
Turkish Coffee
This is a gag that I have fallen for many times: the kids want to try something that I am consuming, I am sure that the flavor will dissuade them, and it utterly fails to. This iteration involved Turkish coffee at Al Sultan, which is particularly strong. I hand the little cups to each child assuming they’ll sip it, hate it, and move on. Instead, they sip it, catch the minty leave-behind , and proceed to down a full shot each. Any drink dispensed in shot form is definitely not a child’s drink. Most adults probably already knew this.
Extra Strong Salsa
Many of my moments of ineptitude stem from playing practical jokes on children that probably are best not done to such small people. In this case it was placing some insanely hot salsa in the center of Amber’s burrito. To give you an idea, I tried a dab the size of a pea, and it was PAIN personified. In Amber’s burrito, I placed about two teaspoons. She was feeling rough afterwards. Perhaps I should have tasted it first.
Enjoy the Nightmares
I had already seen the movie “Hot Fuzz” once, and couldn’t recall any bad parts so when the kids wanted to watch it with me, I saw no problems with it. As it turns out, there is a rather fantastic amount of blood in that movie; cartoonish amounts, actually. Whoops. To add insult to injury, each scene kept getting more and more grotesque than the one before until, when a certain building piece aligned (with great momentum) with a certain character’s head, even Amber said “I can’t believe we are allowed to watch this.” Nor can I, baby, nor can I.
Should Milk be Chunky?
At dinner, I pull out a nearly empty milk jug, noting that it is a full week past the expiration date. The sniff test is ambiguous, it doesn’t smell BAD, but it doesn’t smell good either. Amber picks up the jug and, with no fanfare, takes several huge swallows. She then confirmed that it doesn’t taste “quite right” then, seeing my discomfort, proceeded to put chocolate syrup in the jug, and finished off every last drop, punctuating her completion with a loud burp. You have to admire that commitment to fucking with me, even as your stomach turns.
Cold Showers
A simple formula: a pitcher of ice cold water, quiet feet, and an unsuspecting child in the shower minding his or her own business.
Children are not Cows
While visiting my fiance’s family farm, it occurred to me that the kids had never before seen an electric fence, so after a bit of time spent assuaging their fears, they were convinced to touch it. What I wasn’t aware was that modern, thyristor driven fences differ in many ways from the old style fences I was used to; the most notable of those ways was in intensity and duration of intensity. Testing the fence after the kids each complained of its strength showed me that this fucker HURT. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…oops.
Just Like Their Father
While driving somewhere, on a whim, I dug a booger from my nose and wiped it on my son’s arm expecting the obvious reaction. Instead, he calmly looked at me, scooped it up with his finger, and popped it into his mouth. “Delicious,” he uttered. There is a great deal of me in this child. (No pun intended)
Hunger Strike
Many of these items seem to relate to what my children eat; this relates to what they occasionally do NOT eat. More than once they have allowed me to sleep in, and when lunch time nears, the following conversation takes place:
Me: Alright, who’s hungry?
Them: We are starving, we haven’t eaten yet!
Me: You didn’t have breakfast?
Them: No, we were out of cereal.
The time to mention this would probably have been before lunch, eh?
The Beatings Will Continue…
I walk into the living room, preparing to don my belt when Amber takes off down the hall ahead of me. Overtaken by my inner hunter, I instinctively lash out with my belt, scoring an accidental direct hit on the back of Amber’s arm with my metal-studded belt.
Oh, it gets worse.
Cody observes that it couldn’t have hurt THAT much, and I take over 15 attempts to snap him in the ass with it before accidentally contacting his lower back. Best…father…evar.
And the grand winner, the reason of all reasons that I will not be getting the coveted “Father of the Year” prize this year is…
Birds and Bees
My ex and I decide to have “the talk” with the kids. As such things go, “us” talking to the kids tends to mean “me” talking while she nods along helpfully. This was no exception, and I did what I do best—extemporaneously recite off the cuff facts and manufacture a lecture from thin air. Most of the time this works out quite well; most of the time I’m not speaking to children. I cannot profess to recall everything that I touched on, but I can say with absolute certainty that the concepts of beastiality, masturbation, birth control, and multiple-partner-sex came up. Yes, the first item on the list was beastiality. No, I don’t know how that came about.
As I have said, it’s not looking good for this year. Maybe next? What is, I suppose, most troubling with this list is that it is not yet Thanksgiving as I write it, and these 15 came fairly quickly and easily. I still have the entire month of December during which I can make even more stupid mistakes. It is rather scary when you think about it.
I got my hair cut yesterday, and the ordeal that is my hair has reached a new level…but first, some explanation.
It began with the first visit. My new barber is an elderly gentleman, he couldn’t weigh more than 110 pounds soaking wet, and had just gotten done with an admirable job scissor-cutting my shaggy mop of far-too-long hair. There was, however, something of a language barrier—I am terrible with accents —so there was some confusion when he offered me some service that I cannot entirely understand. He was offering to “clean up” the area around my temples and the hairs on my ears. Finally, after much gesticulating on his part and confusion on mine, I figured, “Why not?!” and agreed to whatever this service might be.
Oops.
He then moved over to the counter and picked up a tongue depressor covered in thick, hot wax, which he immediately applied to my temples in two swift motions. He then returned to the pot of wax and dipped in two halves of a broken Q-Tip, each of which goes into one of my ears. While I was in shock from this turn of events, two additional Q-Tips were placed in my nose.
Into… my… ears… and… nose… What is it with me and wax in odd places?
But as everyone knows, the bad part of wax isn’t the putting-ON, but the getting-OFF. With malicious, evil glee this demonic little elf from hell ripped each wax strip from my head slowly and methodically, eliciting yelps and tears from my normally stoic visage. In the common parlance, that shit hurt! And he LOVED doing it.
“But Jer,” I can hear you saying, “it’s not personal, the man is just doing job.” Wrong! Allow me to prove it to you…
The next time I went, I was prepared. I had used scissors to trim my nose hairs and those in my ears and I used a razor to shave the hair around my temples. I was giving the barber no reason to even consider the wax. So he did his thing on my hair and, when done, examined my cleanly shaved temples and asked if I wanted to get everything waxed. I demurred in an uncharacteristically non-confrontational fashion, and was taken aback when he insisted, then quickly applied the wax to my ear again.
Damnit, he got me again, and the game was on.
On my next visit, I was going to be firm. I was taking no shit. I was NOT going to have my follicles violated by the fiery fingers of waxy perdition. This time, when he offered, I clearly said no. He offered again, expressing a strong desire to attack my face with wax, and again I firmly stated, “No, that will not be necessary.” He acknowledged my wishes. He stuck the waxy Q-Tip in my ear. I did not see that coming.
Barber: 3, Jer: 0
People at this point were asking me why I would go back. “Why,” they would inquire, “would you go through this time and again?” Well, for one thing, the haircut is phenomenal, and I have a really hard time finding someone to do my hair that I really like that is also affordable. More importantly, though, the game is fascinating. I live for this shit. If nothing else, my hair-care has now turned into a fun story; and how can I end it voluntarily?
I absolutely won the next confrontation. When the barber turned to grab the wax, I immediately lept from my seat and started digging in my pocket for cash, telling him that I was all set. I could see the look of disappointment in his eyes, but also a glint of something—challenge perhaps? Indeed, this round went to me…
Barber: 3, Jer: 1
Yesterday, I dove back into the fray once again, determined to win back another “point” in our little game of cat and mouse. I failed. As the service came to a close, not a word about waxing had been spoken. The barber removed my “bib” and began cleaning the hair off from me. “Perhaps,” thought I, “the events from last time have ended the game?” So convinced, was I, of my win that I barely even registered the conversation he was having in some foreign language with the gentleman sweeping the floor nearby. Imagine my surprise, then, when—after wiping the hair from my face with a towel—the towel was removed to reveal what had been taking place while my view was obstructed.
As the towel left my face, I was granted the briefest of glimpse of the floor sweeper in the process of placing a wax-covered Q-Tip into my left ear. Before I could react, the damage was done. Defeated, I accepted my punishment and allowed wax to be applied to my other ear and temples, drawing the line at the removal of nose hair.
Barber: 4, Jer: 1
Well played, sir…well played, but you have tipped your hand. This deft a maneuver could not have been executed by a man merely performing his work. These are not the machinations of a craftsman accomplishing his trade. These are the actions of a genius practicing his works of evil on an unsuspecting innocent.1 Yes, this is personal.
I will not be defeated. I have formulated a master plan that involves placing a healthy dollop of baby oil in each ear and nostril before the next haircut.2 The next round will be mine!
My kids cannot completely comprehend how much different the people they call “Grandma” and “Grandpa” are than the people I call “Mom” and “Dad”; but before I can adequately describe how different the Christmas experience is for my children as compared to that of mine, it is important for me to describe to you the psychological torture that is a Lance Christmas (heretofore known as Lancemastm).
There was no such thing as a parking-lot tree for the Lances. Instead, we would bundle up and go looking for a tree in the woods. As a child it never really occurred to me, but I’m reasonably confident now that such forays almost had to be illegal…at least I don’t recall cash changing hands for the privilege of trudging through knee-deep-on-a-child snow in the Central New York winter to find the perfect tree…and I do mean perfect. No tree was precisely right. This is too short, that is too tall, long-needled pines were preferred over those with short, well balanced was a necessity, full branches dense with needles obviously, and of course an arrow-straight trunk. Mind you, this wasn’t something we dreaded; as testimony to how short our memories were, each year we were giddy to go our tree and started anew the transition from excitement to exhaustion to misery.
Of course, once we’ve dragged home the perfect tree, trimmed it up properly, and stood it PERFECTLY LEVEL in the living room (a process that is not without it’s own nightmarish stories) it is, of course, time to decorate the tree. There is a process involved in hanging ornaments from the tree that is so intricate—so complex—so beyond mortal comprehension—that even 25 years of devoted instruction couldn’t yield unto us its secrets.
It begins with the tree topper; of which we always had two. An angel from my father’s youth and a star. Never once, in 31 Christmases, has that star made it to the top of the tree. Not once. It’s not that we didn’t LIKE the angel, but my brother and I desperately wanted nothing more than to see the fucking star atop the fucking tree just ONE DAMNED TIME!2
Next up is the ornamentation, which would seem to be a fairly simple, straight-forward process. Of course, if you thought that, you would be a complete idiot. There is a method, and it goes a little something like this:
Store-bought ornaments go on last, aside from those given as gifts…or those that have meaning…or those that aren’t generic…or those that are otherwise special. All ornaments are to be hung in a balanced manner around the tree. That means no ornaments too near one another, and certainly no similar ornaments near one another. What constitutes similarity between ornaments? It can’t be described to you, but I will assure you that when you get it wrong, you’ll be made aware. Obviously transparent or translucent ornaments should be hung in front of a light (save for where it would violate the “ornaments too near one another” rule), ornaments should be hung ALL THE WAY around the tree (but the “good” ones will be hung up front [unless it violates the aforementioned “ornaments too near one another” rule]). Oh, and don’t break one. Just don’t.
After the tears have been dried and the ornament-related fights have ended it’s time for the tinsel. The tinsel is my special form of hell, because it must be hung one strand at a time.
One…frigging…strand…at…a…time…
I don’t think you can completely grasp the amount of tinsel that comes in one dollar-store card until you’ve had to cover a tree (tastefully) with three cards worth one strand at a time. Suffice to say, it’s a LOT.
Lucky for my brother and I, my parents are notoriously early risers. On the other hand, my father is a notoriously sadistic human being who, I am reasonably confident, produced offspring solely to have two new people on which to experiment with his mind-games of evil. There is a routine that was followed, without deviation, every Christmas morning that was sure to drive my brother and I mad, and it went a little something like this (all times relative to wake time):
| :00 | My parents exit their room. They mill about for a bit. | My brother and I start to get really, really excited. |
| + :10 | The smoking of the morning cigarette. | Impatient, we ask mom how long it will be. The answer is a derisive laugh. |
| + :25 | The making of (and consumption of) the first cup of coffee. During the actual brewing process one parent would head outside to retrieve the morning paper. | We…are…slowly…losing…our…minds… |
| + :35 | The first trip to the bathroom. At this point, the coffee and cigarette has clearly shaken something loose, so my father grabs a healthy section of the paper and heads for the bathroom for what can only be described as an endless period of colonic cleansing. | My brother shrieks in frustration…we fairly well BEG our mother to find a way to hustle dad along. Mom shrugs helplessly. |
| + :55 | Morning deuce-drop a success, dad comes out and starts up the fire in the woodstove because overnight, it has gotten cold in the house. | We could NOT GIVE LESS OF A FUCK how cold it is. If we were sitting in a SHACK IN SIBERIA, we wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about the fire, we just want to open presents. |
| + 1:05 | While the fire is being tended to, Dad ponders aloud if we should, perhaps, have a big breakfast before we open presents. Perhaps bacon and eggs? Oh, and should we get dressed? And perhaps a shower? | Oh sweet mother of god, what the hell are you doing? Now that we’ve rounded the one hour mark, it’s fair to say that we are both fairly well ready to vibrate across the floor, and still, no presents. |
| + 1:20 | The fire done, it’s time for another cigarette and another cup of coffee. | WHAT THE FUCK! |
| + 1:25 | Dad drags a footrest over in front of the pile of presents and prepares to start handing out gifts. | We are in significant danger of pissing ourselves. At long, long last, we are ready! |
| + 1:26 | Nope, false alarm. We can’t possibly start, there’s no Christmas music playing. Dad slowly rises to his feet and picks through his rather tremendous CD library in search of the PERFECT Christmas CDs for the occasion to load into the changer. | Are you kidding me? For 10 frigging years you’ve put the same 5 CDs in the changer. TEN YEARS!Just put Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, A Very Special Christmas 1, Chet Atkins, and Alabama in the damned CD player and move on! (As a side note, those CDs have absolutely become the soundtrack of Christmas to me) |
| + 1:35 | Well, all that moving around and coffee must have knocked some more loose, because it’s time for another trip to the bathroom, huge handful of the newspaper in tow. | SWEET MERCIFUL JESUS CHRIST, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? There cannot be more in there. It’s not physically possible. You might need a trip to the emergency room if you have to do that kind of bathroom wreckage again…but we can tend to that AFTER THE DAMNED PRESENTS! |
And at nearly two hours after their wakeup (typically some four hours after our wakeup) it is finally time to open gifts.1
Obviously, we can’t just dive into the presents. That wouldn’t be organized and torturous enough. We have a long standing tradition in which dad hands out the presents one at a time; slowly. Occasionally you would find him stopping in puzzlement because we appeared to be out of presents when, clearly, we were not. So…very…slowly. We were not allowed to get into the presents on our own, though. It was just flat-out not allowed. My brother and I both recall getting into them once…just one time…but neither of us recall what the results were. How horrifying must it have been if we can’t even recall what happened, but we knew enough never to touch the presents again.
So what, of this, do my kids have to go through? They show up to a tree that is already up with lights on it and an angel on the top of the tree.2 They put the decorations on any way they want, and if I correct their decoration placement, I’m too controlling. They literally HURL tinsel at the tree in gigantic fist-fulls with no thought to making the strands appear to be delicate little icicles forming.
In the morning, they wake up and open their stockings. They move presents around. They eat chocolate. They suffer only a scant few minutes of torture before my father gives out the gifts. They even touch the presents.
If it sounds like I’m tattling, it’s because I am. Someone must be told! I tried to tell my parents, but they just look at me like I’m crazy.
I’m not crazy, right?
1 In later years, the addition of a home video camera setup was added to this…given many of our sarcastic and dry senses of humor, the camera plan did not last long, as plans go.
2This year, dad retired the old angel from the tree. What did he put up in its place? A NEW ANGEL. Not the star, A NEW ANGEL. That star will never see the top of our tree. Never!
As I had briefly whined about in an entry several months ago, HFCC has been using a particularly horrific picture of me for some of their press. Of course, that was in August, and no mention of any more advertising travesties have been made to me since that time, so I was feeling pretty confident that the situation was over. Until today.
While walking down the hall one of the instructors uttered the cryptic sounding statement, “Hey, featured student!”
“What?”, thought I.
A short while later, one of the workstudy students opened a browser window and the default homepage opened up. The HFCC main page.
…and that’s when we saw it.
Clicking through the link brings me to more horrifying visions…
Yes, the picture that will not die… WILL NOT DIE!
It’s not that I’m not flattered. I really am. Truly. But this is an atrocious picture of me. I don’t really look like this. At all. Even a bit. Do I? And isn’t “Marketing Entrepreneur” overselling the case just a tad? I mean, Marketing Entrepreneur? Really?
As I have mentioned once or twice, there is this particularly horrific picture of me that the HFCC PR department took that resurfaces periodically with the apparent intent of causing me embarassment. In this picture’s last adventure I was the “featured student” and the photo was on the front page of the website. Not so bad, I mean, how many people go to the web site, and more importantly, how many people actually read the front page?
This week, they upped the ante. This came in the mail:
I am rather impressed, however, that they find different soundbytes from the lengthy interview process to use for each advertising method. This one reads (for those that can’t see it):
I’m the custodial parent to two children, ages nine and ten. Spending time with my kids is important. Being an HFCC co-op student really works well with my schedule. I’m able to work and take classes while my kids are in school. I can even see improvement in my children’s schoolwork now that I’m around more.
Oh, and this time, I’m a…
Former soldier, US Army; Marketing Entrepeneur; Computer Software Developer; Future teacher; Single parent
in addition to being an HFCC student. I have to say, I’m somewhat more impressed with myself.
But DAMNIT that’s a crappy picture.
It’s flattering, and all, that they wanted to use me in an ad, but holy crap is this a terrible picture of me. This appeared in the August 19th, 2007 issue of the Dearborn Press and Guide.
I am writing in response to Luke Duncan’s October 11th article, “The Teacher Tax.” While I admire Mr. Duncan’s concern for the finances of fellow students and the economics of education, I feel compelled to put to rest some of the fallacious conclusions contained in the article. A “Teacher Tax”, while an entertaining rhetorical device, is not an apt description of the course packets on sale in the bookstore.
Instructors throughout academia publish their work with an eye toward widespread distribution. These publications are the vehicle that drives our educational system, financial compensation for such work is the fuel that powers that vehicle. While it is romantic to hold onto the ideal that teachers teach for love of the educational process, and while that is certainly true in many cases, even teachers have to pay the bills. Published works such as textbooks, study guides, workbooks, and course packets are intended for an audience that far exceeds the author’s classroom inhabitants; they are intended for use on a much broader scale. The amount of time and effort that writing and organizing such a work requires is way above and beyond that which an instructor’s salary is designed to cover. While it would be appreciated if instructors would give of their spare time for free, such charity should not be required.
The article goes on to make the statement that course packets should be sold at cost; and on this point I agree wholeheartedly. The students should be charged only for the expenses that go into the creation of these valuable learning materials (plus the bookstore’s profit margin). Of course, those costs should include the time and effort required to produce such a text in addition to those expenses incurred through publication and distribution. While new ideas are often wrought of self-sacrifice, comparatively few innovations are derived purely from altruism. Even Lawrence Lessig, the creator of the Creative Commons licensing movement, recognizes the importance of revenue-generation to the creative process. One of the components of the “copy-left” system he has created is exclusively used to license for-profit publishing.
Have some teachers found a nice side income? The question is asked with the implied timbre of accusation, as if the desire to acquire money in exchange for performing a task is something of which we should be ashamed. The concept of payment for services rendered is one of the ideas on which our economy is based. An engineer at an automotive company is paid for his work at the plant. When he uses that knowledge to repair a car on his own time, it is perfectly reasonable for that engineer to expect payment for his time. Time is a valuable commodity, and should be valued as greatly as the material cost of text production. It is safe to assume that most of the students here at Henry Ford are spending their tuition money in the hopes that they, too, can find a job where their time will be compensated for.
I, too, feel the strain of my financial situation each semester when I join the long lines in the student bookstore. Make no mistake, it is a problem shared by the bulk of the student body, and there is, perhaps, a need for some type of reform. Rest assured, however, that a supposed “Teacher Tax”, as defined by Mr. Duncan’s article, is not the source of said reform. Without the ability to make money from publishing, innovation in the area of schoolbook development would almost certainly grind to a halt.
Returning to school at thirty years old, I found myself somewhat jaded at the prospect of my career after school. I was certainly not excited about the prospect of obtaining a degree so that I could return to a career that I considered to be, at best, a chore. As a result, I initially entered into the co-op program at Henry Ford Community College with the expectation that I would gain very little outside of a grade and another entry on my resume, and the further expectation that it would be more of the same, uninteresting thing that I have been doing for years. Surely, there would be nothing of importance that I would be able to take away from a part-time job that I had not already gained from nearly a decade in corporate Information Technology. I could not have been more wrong. This co-op did not just give me a grade. Instead, I can say with no exaggeration that my time with this work-study program has been a life altering experience.
As a Lab Technician, my official responsibilities could be summarized best as an “equipment babysitter” of sorts; someone to ensure that the lab rules are followed while signing in students and helping students with the equipment. Unofficially, I spent much of my day during the first semester helping the Computer Information Systems (CIS) students understand their coursework. It is in this capacity that I found an exciting, enjoyable niche. I learned that I enjoy teaching college students. Suddenly, a new branch of opportunity sprouted before me, and my future prospects were no longer the bleak, dismal things that I had been dreading.
Now that I have adjusted my collegiate plans to those of an aspiring college instructor, my time as a co-op student has become even more useful. The time I spend at work is now time spent learning how to deal with a variety of different students with varying needs, goals, abilities, learning methods, and skill levels. Just two short semesters has already improved my ability to explain a concept from many different perspectives–trying repeatedly until I can find one that will work. This time spent has also served to teach me new ways to communicate effectively with students. These improvements have been key factors in the considerable expansion of my role as unofficial tutor this semester. I have been invited to sit in on the lab time for two separate CIS125 classes so that I can provide supplemental instruction to the students as they are actively trying to complete their assignments.
The experience, as a whole, has been extremely gratifying. The feeling of working with someone who is having a problem with a concept and being there when they have that “breakthrough moment,” and to know that I was a part of that process, has made the entire process something I strongly wish to remain a part of. I cannot imagine having ever gotten a chance to take part in this type of work without this work-study position. Had this position not been available to me, I would be continuing on my path back into a job field that I have never particularly enjoyed, merely to make money.
A significant percentage of the reason that this program has worked so well for me is that my employers are also educators. As such, they have an understanding of student life, of going back to school, or choosing a career path that suits your strengths, and of finding a path through the educational experience that will end some place meaningful. Certainly, the value of the time I have spent at work would be lessened, had I not been working with a corps of fine educators who have worked hard to help me succeed. The influence that each of these instructors have exerted upon my experience has been a great boon in guiding me down that path.
If I could make any suggestion to potential work-study students, it would be this: Try something new. Do not simply do what you have always done; instead, take this relatively risk-free opportunity to spend a semester doing something different. It might very well open up a completely new avenue of possibility for you that you had no idea existed.
When I was growing up, my father and I used to discuss what I would do when I grew up. I used to say “doctor” or “lawyer” because those were jobs that seemed to make a great deal of money. My father’s response was always the same. He would always reply, “A paycheck is a fringe benefit to doing a job that you enjoy.” To me, that always felt like an unrealistic goal, but today, having the benefit of my co-op position under my belt, I can say with absolute assurance that my paycheck most certainly is a fringe benefit of a job that I enjoy doing. For the first time since I came back to school, I am genuinely excited about finishing school and taking the next step forward, into my new, “grown up” life.
Henry Ford Community College student Jeremy Lance had little idea that returning to college at age 30 and obtaining a cooperative education (co-op) position at HFCC would significantly alter his life plans and lead him toward his dream career.
It did, and the experience paid off in more ways than one. Lance was recently awarded second place and a $250 scholarship in the Carol Quandt Student Essay Contest for writing about his co-op experience at HFCC in an essay titled, ‘A Change of Plans.’ Lance was the first community college student ever to win an award in the statewide essay contest.
The contest was sponsored by the Michigan Council for Internships and Cooperative Education. Students were asked to write about factors that have been most influential in making their co-op experience valuable. The contest was open to co-op students from all Michigan colleges and universities.
Lance, 30 of Inkster, enrolled at HFCC in the winter 2007 semester to earn a degree in Computer Information Systems (CIS) so he could advance in his job, after working more than a decade in information technology in a corporate setting. Lance also enrolled in the Cooperative Education program at HFCC to earn money and to add more experience to his resume. At first, he did not realize how much he would learn from the program, which combines work experience with college credit.
“I can say that my time with HFCC’s Co-op program has been a life altering experience,” explained Lance. “Employers work with you and your schedule, which is very beneficial.”
Lance began his co-op position working as a lab tech in HFCC’s student computer lab. His job included helping Computer Information Systems (CIS) students with their course work and with lab equipment, as well as other jobs around the lab. It wasn’t until he was asked to assist students in a large introductory computer class that he discovered he had an interest in teaching.
“I learned I enjoyed teaching college students and found new opportunities before me,” notes Lance. “Teaching was always something I wanted to do, but I didn’t realize that teaching at the college level was something attainable for me.”
Working with CIS students allowed Lance to deal with a variety of students with different needs, goals, abilities, learning methods, and skill levels, and he wrote about the benefits of that in his essay.
“Just two short semesters has already improved my ability to explain a concept from many different perspectives,” Lance wrote. “This time spent has also served to teach me new ways to communicate effectively with students.”
Lance, who also is a member of HFCC’s Phi Theta Kappa chapter, the national honor society for two-year college students, has been invited to be an unofficial tutor this semester, which allows him to sit in on lab time for two separate CIS 125 classes to provide extra instruction to students as they complete their assignments.
“The experience, as a whole, has been extremely gratifying,” says Lance. “The feeling of working with someone who is having a problem with a concept and being there when they have that ‘breakthrough moment,’ and to know that I was a part of that process, is something I wish to remain a part of.”
“I can’t imagine having ever had the chance to take part in this type of work without this co-op position.”
HFCC’s Cooperative Education program provides students with both work experience and classroom instruction. Students are employed in practical, paid positions directly related to their educational and career goals. Students receive a paying job, a letter grade, and college credit while enrolled in the co-op program at HFCC. Students registered in co-op must fulfill all terms of employment as well as attend regular class sessions and complete all course requirements.
To enroll in the co-op program, students must first pick up an application from the Co-op Office, located in room T-112 in HFCC’s Technology Building on the main campus located at 5101 Evergreen in Dearborn. Students must also prepare a resume and meet with a Cooperative Education specialist to submit the completed application and resume. Resume guidelines as well as more HFCC co-op information can be found at www.hfcc.edu/coop.
“Jeremy is a joy to work with,” says Nancy Stupsker, HFCC cooperative education specialist. “He had received excellent feedback from his co-op supervisor not only for his outstanding computer skills, but for his ability to work well with students. I am very proud to have him represent our college.”
In the future, Lance plans on attending the University of Michigan-Dearborn to earn a bachelor’s degree and hopes to come back to HFCC as a CIS instructor.
“If I could make any suggestion to potential co-op students, it would be try something new,” Lance wrote in his essay. “Do not simply do what you have always done. Instead, take this relatively risk-free opportunity to spend a semester doing something different. It might open up a new avenue of possibility for you that you had no idea existed.”
For more information on HFCC’s Cooperative Education program, please call Stupsker at 313-845-6359. For more information on HFCC, visit www.hfcc.edu or call 1-800-858-HFCC (4322).
Somewhere in the early 2000s, I ran the IT Department for a modestly sized marketing firm in southeast MI. When I say that I ran the IT Department, a more honest assessment would be that I was the most senior IT person in a modestly sized department. As such, I was responsible for all of the technical issues that would come up on a daily basis, in addition to all of the behind the scenes work that goes into making the servers run and the email arrive.
Being a small company, everyone knew everyone else; and everyone had an opinion of everyone else. It was easy to pick out which employees got along, and which did not. For nearly every employee, you could find a nemesis; a polar opposite. Almost everyone had their arch-rival; mine was Don1.
Don was everything that was wrong with white collar society. He was a smarmy, over-educated but under-intelligent, sycophantic bastard, and I detested him. When he quit to follow his wife to another state for her job, I (somewhat) silently cheered. When I heard months later that he divorced his wife because she was cheating on him, I did a small Irish jig in the main conference room. When he came back to work for us again, it was all I could do not to leap from my ninth-story window. He would take every available opportunity to make my life miserable, and I would do the same to him. Then, one day the ultimate revenge fell into my lap…
On a fine, sunny day in late September, a few months after his return to the company, the anti-Jer wandered into my office carrying his computer in his hands. Already, I was enraged. What is he doing with this computer in his hands? He’s not allowed to disconnect his computer. He’s not allowed to carry it around the building. As he dumps it unceremoniously onto the corner of my desk, he says brusquely, “It’s running slowly, I need it back by tomorrow”, and walks quickly from my office.
This is exactly why I keep my office door locked.
Knowing that he won this round, I opted not to fight the inevitable, and I booted up his system. Just as I thought, tons of installed software and extra crap is being loaded on startup, slowing everything down. In a gesture of defiance, I decide to baseload his system and load user rights management on it. In preparation, I started copying his user directory to the server. While waiting for the copy to complete, I called a friend and spoke to him briefly about plans that evening. It was during this conversation that sweet, sweet revenge came a-knocking.
“You have to come down here right now and look at this!” I exclaimed.
“What is it?” Gary asked.
“Just come look…”, I said, before disconnecting the conversation.
Moments later, I was showing Gary what has passed before my eyes just a few minutes before. A directory named “Personals” with subdirectories for “Adult Friend Finder”, “Yahoo Personals”, “eHarmony”, and several other dating sites. Inside of each directory was a series of pictures of Don, a Word document containing his advertisement blurb, and, most importantly, his log of conversations with people from each site. It was a veritable goldmine of usable information…but what to do with it?
We called our friend Ron, the only other smoker, and invited him out for a cigarette, where we related to him what we had found. It was Ron who put to bed our ideas of turning Don in or blackmailing him in favor of something much more fun. Starting a relationship with him. We agreed to go out for drinks that night to formulate a plan of attack.
The next day, I returned Don’s computer to him, and I couldn’t even find it in myself to respond to his barbs because I was too excited about what the day had in store. I hustled back to my office and got right to work.
First, I searched the web for images of a woman. Specifically, I needed to find a very pretty brunette (Don’s preference) with photos that did not look professional, and more importantly, I had to be able to get several clothed pictures of her and at least one revealing photo. I found what I was looking for on some young woman’s vanity site.
I then created an account on one of his less popular free dating sites. I created a profile that matched his “ideals” nearly precisely, gave an address that was in a neighborhood near-but-not-too-near to his, uploaded one of my pictures, and entered “Elizabeth’s” ad.
Gary, Ron, and I had spent most of the evening trying to figure out what to say, and had ultimately come up with a masterpiece that extolled the virtues of shorter men, the love of movies, the lack of desire to travel, and an adoration of hockey. The adoration of hockey nearly ruined us several times, as there was not a hockey fan among our number. Later, once things got going, we recruited Allen as our hockey expert.
Our plan was to wait a few days, then message Don as if we had just run across his ad, but things were hastened when he replied to our ad that same day. During work hours no less! I quickly printed off his message, grabbed Gary and Ron, and we left to go smoke. Over our smoke break, we read his message several times and formulated a response. When I got back to my office, I sent it off, and thus began our beautiful relationship.
It was apparent, right off, that Don was as full of himself as we had always believed. It was hard to ignore or, worse, applaud some of his ridiculously self-aggrandizing statements. When he talked about how much he wasn’t “hard on the eyes” or how important it was that he keep his body “rock hard”, it would stump us. How would an actual woman respond to such stupidity? More to the point, how stupid must we make “Elizabeth” sound that she wouldn’t laugh at such idiocy? Nevertheless, we plugged on; it would be worth it.
We began to run into an issue when he wanted to meet with Liz. We had made her an ER nurse at a hospital that was local enough to seem reasonable while being far enough to dissuade him from trying to surprise her at work. The ER concept was a godsend, allowing us to schedule dates with Don then cancel the day before or the day of due to work several times. Between the crazy ER nurse hours and her long drive to work, it was easy to paint a picture of her as someone that was just very busy at the moment and unable to make schedules work out. Fortunately, she had a promotion coming soon that would reduce her hours dramatically. Until then, Don had to make due with an increasingly sexual text-based relationship.
Why text based? On three or four separate occasions, we communicated with him by phone using my friend’s girlfriend, Lisa, as our proxy. This proved to be unnerving to all of us, because Lisa laughed when she was nervous, and she was not good at extemporaneous speaking. She would just freeze while we fed her something to say. Fortunately, Don was not the sharpest pencil in the box, and chalked up her lack of ability to communicate to general nervousness. The upside to Lisa, however, was that she had a sexy phone voice. When he started talking a little dirty to her, she took off on her own and, in no time, was getting phone-sex-operator nasty with the dwarven geek. We had to keep voice conversation minimal, because even a chud like Don would notice her inability to do anything but phone sex with any degree of normalcy sooner or later.
By the end of October, Don was getting restless. We had put him off as long as we could, but his interest seemed to be waning due to the lack of physical or even vocal contact. Things had gone as far as they could go; or so we thought.
In retrospect, a few less beers consumed by each of us would have probably made our thought process a bit more clear. Had Allen not bought several rounds of shots (he was a regular in our group now), we would have probably rethought our brilliant finale. As it turned out, we got just drunk enough that our brilliance knew no bounds. We decided to meet him for lunch on Halloween. It began as a simple enough plan; plan to meet him at the Mongolian barbecue, show up before he does, take a picture of him getting stood up, and drop off a printout of all of the emails and the picture on his desk later on. It was fantastic.
Then it got better.
I made a joke about showing up and saying “Hi” to him. That turned into me showing up in a wig, which ultimately transformed into me showing up in full drag and introducing myself to him as Liz. That, ultimately, was the downfall of the experiment.
On that fateful day, I called in sick to work so that Don wouldn’t see me in my pretty blue dress. We had set lunch for noon, so Gary, Ron, and Allen had all arrived at 11:30 so they could get seats overlooking the fun. At 12:15 I entered the restaurant.
To say that Don had a puzzled look on his face when he saw me walk through the door would have been an understatement. I must have looked quite a sight, and I relished in his demeanor change as his glance moved down from my long black hair haphazardly stuffed under a platinum Marilyn Monroe wig (the only we had available), past my goatee covered face, along my tattooed and hairy arms, below my wide hips, and across my hairy legs, coming to a rest upon my work boots. His confusion slowly dissolved into amusement, then was quickly replaced by shock as I approached his table. Horror overtook his features as I stopped across from him and said “Don? I’m Liz!” in my rather masculine voice.
There were many ways to react to this. Really level people would realize what had happened, see the humor, and laugh it off. Most people would get very angry and storm off, plotting revenge. There is a third option; extreme aggression. This is not an option that we had taken into account. When Don leapt to his feet, my assumption was that it was to rush from the building. When he cocked his fist and swung at me, I was taken completely off guard. I ducked and punched him. He lost his balance and fell to the ground.
It was madness. Rather than get arrested in full drag, I chose to sprint for the door before Don could regain his feet. I would live to fight another day.
The epilogue to this epic battle is that, for the next two months, work was a very uncomfortable place. At no point was our little joke ever brought up…and his dating foibles became similarly off limits. In December, I quit to pursue a better option, but I would like to think that Don still thinks twice before he dates on the Internet from work. And the moral that you can take with you from this story? Maybe, just maybe, you should be nice to your IT people.
1 All names changed, because some of these people might want to work in this town again.
First, if a member of my family is reading this; or for that matter, anyone who is squeamish, not amused by the pain of others, or easily offended…just do all of us a favor and skip this entry.
Seriously, move along.
You’ll be sorry…
As 2006 started, my then-girlfriend, Terra, 
had all but moved into my house, and as such all manner of feminine products had taken up residence in my bathroom. This is a phenomena that I will be investigating further at some point in the future, but for now, suffice to say there was no end to the strange devices and products with which I have little experience that have invaded my life. Among these things…a waxing kit.
Now, I have been staring at this thing since I came back from my Christmas trip to NY, and every time I enter my bathroom it calls to me…try me…try me…
As a guy, there are limitations as to what I can wax…if I was to wax my legs, arms, or chest…that would just be inappropriate (since I am not a body builder, a swimmer, or trying to pick up men). My head was a option, but I’m tired of the bald look, and it is winter. That pretty much left my “equipment”.
Yeah…that equipment.
So, I hook up the warming apparatus, and proceeded to read the instructions. It is important to note that, as a guy, I suffer from vanity. As such, when the directions indicated to try this on a small patch of hair first as a test, I literally could not do so. I was constitutionally incapable. Even though I would be the only one to know that I was such a weakling that I actually tested a small area, I just couldn’t. So, I covered my taint and sack with hot wax.
After the waxy coating, I added those nifty cloth strips (three to the sack, one to the taint), waited a moment for the wax to do its hardening thing, then gave a test tug to one of the sack-attached strips.
Instant tears.
“Okay,” I thought, “this is going to be pretty painful, but, hey, I’m a man, I can take it, right?” With that pep talk, I psyched myself up and decide that strip one is coming off like a band-aid, right now.
One scream and a lot of tears later, I’m laying in a ball on the floor. Wow!
The only upside to this is that there’s only three more to go, right? Wrong! Upon closer inspection, all four strips are still in place. Apparently, I failed to take into account the elastic nature of my bag of jewels. Yanking the strip merely stretched my balls to about my knees, but did not remove the strip or any hair. Panic sets in. I need to get these strips off, and pulling again just ain’t happening. I finally realize that perhaps a hair dryer would soften the wax sufficiently to remove it semi-painlessly. Wrong. You lie, random person from the Internet! The amount of heat that would be required to melt the wax is far in excess of what my nuts can take applied directly to them… and an iron? You are sick and cruel! This left only one thing to do… grab my sack (literally) and yank the hell out of the strips.
At any rate, I then proceeded to expediently yank the strips from my genital region with much screaming, howling, pain and, yes, bleeding.
Bleeding? The instructions said nothing of blood coming from the very holes in which my hairs used to reside. What manner of false advertising is this?
After bathing away the folicular blood and soaking for a while to help rinse away the 
pain and horror that this stunt has caused, I found a new problem… actually, two of them. First, not all the hair went away. Second, not all the wax went away either. Unfortunately, the first problem left me looking like I had the genital mange, so I was forced to shave after my botched wax job. Hey, do you know what hurts almost as much as waxing your nuts? Shaving your freshly mangled nuts, that’s what, especially with wax still present. The second problem left me painfully, carefully un-sticking my badly butchered sack from the floor of the bathtub. Insult, meet injury.
With the benefit of a few days between me and my waxy pain, I finally could comfortably do a search to find out what I did wrong… and I found this article with an important part I’ll quote for you here:
Yes, Mr. Whittall, it does, it certainly does.
The moral of the story? Well, there are many morals you could take away from this story: Don’t wax your balls would be chief among them, but read the instructions is probably in there too. Perhaps, simply put, don’t be me?
Sadly, I did not get a chance to post this when it happened on Tuesday.
There is some chemical property of McDonalds’ coffee that has a very negative effect on my gastro-intestinal system. Specifically, it runs straight through me. Now, understand that I’m not referring to the normal coffee-induced pooping that is a result of your average cup of Joe. No, gentle reader, the effect to which I refer can best be described by the phrase “pissing out my ass”. Keep all of this in mind when I say that Tuesday morning, on the way into school, I picked up a tall cup of this special brew on my way to an Econ test.
I’m a glutton for punishment, I guess.
So at 7:30 in the morning, I’m finishing my large coffee as I take what should be a pretty simple part 1 of an exam…when I feel a gurgling in my stomach. I have to shit…no, I have to shit NOW! I’m talking about a degree of urgency that doesn’t say “You should go to the bathroom” or even “You should run to the bathroom”, but “You should run to the bathroom, and bring your cup, in case you have to stop along the way and shit in THAT!” Things were urgent.
I’ve never used the bathrooms on the third floor of this building, so I race down the hall with a 50/50 chance of the direction I’ve chosen being the Men’s room…and a 50/50 chance of it being the ladies room.
Guess which I picked?
For a brief moment, I considered just using the women’s restroom, but the damage I was going to visit upon the toilet was something I couldn’t bring myself to do in anything but a men’s room. Chagrined, I pressed on, retracing my steps and heading to the men’s room.
Walking like a duck. POWERwalking like a duck.
By the time I got to the stall, the urgency had reached a fever pitch. Luckily my pants are oversized, because I didn’t unbuckle my belt or unbutton my pants, I just smoothly slid everything down below my ass and let fly as my ass approached the seat.
The extra few seconds I saved by not waiting until my ass was in actual contact with the seat was my downfall. You see, what came out of my orifice had the appropriate color and odor, but aside from that bore absolutely no resemblance to crap. To begin with, it was purely liquid. More importantly, it came out of my ass at an ALARMING velocity. Fortunately, I was able to stop myself from sitting all the way down, because the vile matter that was being expelled from my colon sprayed all over the seat, the floor, the back wall…even a little on the side-walls of the stall. It was horrifying.
When the initial volley ended, I popped the door open, peeked around the bathroom to ensure that I was alone, and scooted into the next stall so I could sit down and finish my business. A few moments later, I was finished and cleaned, and I started pulling some paper towels to mop up my mess…
…but I really should get back to my test, right?
So I ditched my mess and went back to my test. Mission accomplished, no harm, no foul…except the guy that sits at my desk with me then gets up to go to the bathroom. It did not occur to me that anything could go wrong when he returned and said, in a very loud voice, “Someone shit ALL OVER the bathroom. It’s all over the place, it’s in like, three stalls!”
To which I responded, “It was ONE STALL!”
Then I realized what I’d done…and just went back to doing my test.
Nobody has mentioned it to me yet.
A friend of mine was always fond of saying that the Army was like high school, only more so. Every time I think of that quote, I cannot help but be reminded of the story of the “Shitting Bandit”, and the high school-esque hijinks surrounding that summer in 1995 in Seoul, South Korea.
To set the scene, we were living in a barracks that amounted to a straight, three-story high monolith consisting of a straight hall with four-person cube rooms lined up on each side. The outside wall of each room had two huge, screen-less windows that slid open to reveal a gap a full grown man could walk through with barely a duck of his head.
Oh, and the locks only consistently worked on the second floor windows (the girls’ floor, go figure).
Adding to our security woes, due to ongoing construction of some sort throughout the summer there was scaffolding in place the length and height of one side of the building. Many an evening was spent drunk on the roof of the barracks due to our easy access.
In short, the security of our rooms could have used some improvement.
The legend of the Shitting Bandit began simply enough…with a pile of shit in the shared first floor shower.
Now, when I say “in the shower” what I mean, to be very specific, is dead center of the community shower, neatly coiled, right next to the drain.
A sum total of six or seven people saw it first hand, and it was quickly cleaned up. A stern announcement was made at formation. No one was caught.
Less than a week later, this one-time incident was repeated, except this time, the offending offal was left dead in the middle of the hall, immediately outside the bathroom door on the first floor.
Many more people saw it, and it was quickly cleaned up. A stern announcement was again made at formation. No one was caught.
Two weeks went by before the ante was again upped, and the offender officially became a serial shitter. This time, after several days of inexplicable, horrific smells from the first and third floor bathrooms, a huge helping of crap was found inside the grill of the wall heaters in both rooms.
Everyone smelled it; a few saw it. It was cleaned professionally. A series of announcements were made at formation. A memo was placed into circulation by our commander. No one was caught.
At this point, it was funny to nearly all (save for those on whom it fell to clean up the offending feces), but the next events really brought matters home…literally. Less than two weeks after the last event, a turd was found in the heater grill of three different sleeping quarters.
Several people saw it; everyone heard about it; twelve people were intimately and directly affected. It was professionally cleaned. Many more announcements were made at formation. Another memo was placed into circulation from our commander. The name “The Shitting Bandit” was coined.
Once the bandit started hitting rooms, a (forgive the obvious pun) shitstorm erupted. Nothing was safe. For weeks, crap was found everywhere imaginable. In room heaters, on a paper plate on someone’s bed, in the drinking fountain, in a baggie hung from the bulletin board…everywhere. At one point, a tupperware dish packed full of shit was found in the refrigerator in the CQ office, which is staffed 24/7. The shitting bandit was a magician; an evil magician that works exclusively with poop.
Things had gotten out of hand. Everyone saw dookie. Announcements were made daily at formation by the commander himself. Memos were sent out by our Colonel. Guards were posted. Window locks were repaired. A “town hall” meeting was called. Rumors started that the shit was being DNA tested. Still, no one was caught.
One day, with no warning, it all stopped. Just like that, the Shitting Bandit had gone into retirement. Theories that had been bandied about that the Bandit was actually several people acting individually were suddenly discarded; if it were many people, how would one explain the abrupt stop? Fear and confusion replaced amusement and mirth. For weeks, soldiers were petrified whenever they opened wall lockers or turned down their beds…what would happen next!?
As it turns out, nothing did. The story ended as anticlimactically as an Austen novel. No one was ever found and nothing ever came of any investigation that might have happened. We all have theories, but I am confident that I know who did it. My close friend and drinking buddy, Mike, had all the earmarks: the past experience breaking into rooms as the “Ether Bunny” (a great story for another time), the disturbing habits, the lack of disgust with bodily waste, the ability, the time…but most of all, the normally outspoken Mike would sit back quietly and listen intently whenever the Bandit was discussed. Rather than join in the theory-filled conversations, he would kick back with an amused expression on his face and observe. It simply had to be him…and he is an evil genius.
I really need to look him up…