The DN
Say cheese.
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The Daily News
1 We're baaaaaaack!
2 Today is the first day of the 2013-14 school year.
3 Anyonbody lookin'?
4 I'm always excited the first day. A part of me wishes Uncle John's Band were playing in the background, but it's not. Well, here it is for you Dead Heads out there, who can evidently hear music even when none is playin'.
5 This year the DN goes into its seventeenth year of existence, nine online.
6 I think.
7 Last time I looked.
8 Well the first days are the hardest days; don't you worry anymore.
9 'Cause when life looks like Easy Street there is danger at your door.
10 Think this through with me.
11 Let me know you're mine.
12 Oh, ho, what I want to know is are you kind?
13 Anybody lookin'?
14 This is all weird, you know, because I finally gave up on the venerable Xanga.
15 I heard early in the summertime that Xanga was on the chopping block.
16 Being the loyal sort anybody knows I am, I did what any full-blooded American hack would do: I bailed!
17 I experimented with a few different "blogs" during the summer.
18 I never like calling the DN a "blog" because it pre-dates blogging by centuries.
19 Okay, so that was an over-exaggeration.
20 It DOES pre-date blogging by quite a margin though.
21 I won't go into all of that right now, as I have corn to plow, and a saloon to run.
22 The first days indeed.
23 Moving on, Part the First: Last year the theme of all of this nonsense was sort of A Day in the Life. The idea was to write each day school is in session and give the layman an idea of what sorts of things REALLY go on in a school.
24 In my case, I'd have to say thievery, really early that is.
25 I went to my classroom last week and counted thirty-six desks in my room.
26 I made sure that I was able to keep that many, as I anticipated some larger class sizes this year.
27 There were chairs all helter/skelter throughout my building too. I switched out two older chairs from my room with a couple of newer ones that were randomly all over the building.
28 I don't suppose that is officially thievery, but it just might be. I saw a lot of it as more of an early bird sort of thing.
29 This is actually one of the first years I ever went in early to get my room set up.
30 Not sure why.
31 I think it was because my annual trip to Mars came late in the summer, although reasonably normal in terms of when we go there.
32 Mars, btw (you like that Facebook stuff? "btw" yeah boy!) is a euphemism for where I disappear for two to three weeks each year.
33 Nobody reaches me. It is my area of the universe where work stays away, and where I put my head in a waterfall and allow the cool stream to erase all thought of the classroom.
34 Interestingly, I spend it with a great amount of people who work in education. We talk general shop, the way cousins talk about school when they camp out in the mountains.
35 We share goofy stories and fun things, but NEVER talk "shop," that is, what we plan for the year, or how we hope to close the gap, or any of that stuff.
36 Mars.
37 Worst kept secret around, but it always refreshes me, what with the sunrises, the waterfalls, the bbq's, the sun bathing, boating, hiking, and midnight talks.
38 <little chirping bird music up>
39 Moving on, Part Two: I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "There are no waterfalls or bbq's on Mars!"
40 Here's a little hint: Mars just means a place we can't be reached. It's admittedly a lousy analogy. It was originally Jupiter, but we jumped ship. Too many moons. We like one blue moon on Mars.
41 Wait.
42 DOES Mars have two moons???
43 Ah, shoebox.
44 I LOVES me right after vacay. The back of my head, which contains all my logic, suddenly expands to the size of a shoebox, and the most logical things cling to that back wall of my mind. It takes the length of a shoebox for logic and common sense to return to the frontal part of my cranium.
45 Cranium.
46 Something in the back of that shoebox makes me remember that we played a game called Cranium whilst on Mars.
47 Whilst.
49 That one kills me.
50 There's a rule about that one, but here it is; I'll save you the time: pretend there is no word "whilst," at least in the USA. I once read a book on choreography by some choreographer who kept using "whilst." I almost thought that all choreographers were morons because of that one choreographer. The word is archaic, and on the brink of obsolete. So it isn't wrong, necessarily, just silly and unnecessary.
51 I hope to be giving a bunch of grammar tips in this year's DN. I had planned on that one all the way back in June.
52 That was pre-shoebox, and right on the front lines.
53 So I guess there's no time like the present.
54 There practically ain't no "whilst" anymore. Lose it. Now. There technically ain't no ain't either, but that's for another day.
55 Today's Unsolicited Glamorous Grammar Lesson, let us deem it "TUGGLE" is, "No whilst." Let's lay this word to rest, America. England, it's all yours. I think it's janky.
56 Tuggle might work. It's just loosely structured enough that I am not committed to it every single day.
57 Tuggle 1: "No whilst." Not on my watch.
58 Me likes.
59 Anybody lookin'?
60 We'll see you tomorrow. Feel free to feed back whilst this "blog" or whatever is still in proper working order.
61 It's Tuesday. Fly low.
62 See you again.
63 Peace.
~H~
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