Hardly the Last Word

There’s no good way to choose between the impiety of refusing to be a “fan” of Jesus, the Bible, prayer, and forgiveness on one hand; and the impiety of trivializing them by becoming their “fans” on the other.

Two sophomore lit papers left.? Then 33 sophomore response papers from last Tuesday.? Then 22 freshman portfolios.? Then 33 sophomore lit papers.? Then 22 more freshman portfolios.? Then 35 sophomore final exams.? Then dissertation chapters.? Then a new job.? Then a baby.? Then next Christmas.
I do sometimes think that I’ll just schedule a good long [...]

People who know me know that I don’t think all that much about style, decoration, fashion, or any of those sorts of things.? I try to put on clean clothes every morning, and beyond that Mary makes such decisions.
That said, I think, after having my car in the shop most of last week and all [...]

I’m down to the last ten papers in this round of freshman comp grading.? I’ve been grading instead of blogging.? I’m very much tired.

I really did have high hopes for Bill Maher’s podcast.
I started downloading podcasts a couple weeks ago, and when I discovered that HBO offered the audio of Maher’s show for free, I downloaded the last bits of last season.? So on some level I suppose I was like the old men in “Rip van Winkle” [...]

This particular sight actually popped up in my neighborhood about a month ago, but as I said yesterday, I just cleared off my camera’s memory card, so here you go.
I imagine I’ll be looking at this until November, perhaps beyond that if things turn out certain ways.? Gotta love those values voters.
If implied cussing isn’t [...]

We hauled six boxes of books, most in very good shape, up to Johnson City, trusting that Mr. K’s, formerly the best used book store in our sphere of influence, would give us great trade credit and allow us to grab some seminarians’, Milliganders’ and elementary teachers’ books and enjoy them back in Georgia.
They took [...]

No, that’s not a socio-political metaphor.? I couldn’t sing through the service Sunday morning, and I was down to a raspy monotone when VBS started up last night.? But, being the yahoo I am, and still attempting to communicate over open space with a crew of third and fourth graders, I blew my voice out.? [...]

I read this morning that the opening week of sales on Grand Theft Auto 4 outgrossed opening weekend for Iron Man, which is now the runner-up for biggest non-sequel opening movie for a weekend, by one hundred fifty percent.
When we were grabbing a bite for supper, I saw ESPN anchors interviewing Donald Trump on why [...]

I’ve got my first five graded.? About thirty to go.? I’m eyeballing Tuesday as a potential marathon day: if I can put in hours from the time Mary takes off to the time I have to pick up Micah (Mary’s got meetings with fifth grade parents that night) and move at a rate of two [...]

I’m fifteen minutes away from my last of five meetings today.? I’ve been up since 4:00 this morning reviewing documents for said meetings, and I’m likely to be awake entirely too early from now until the end of May.
Beyond that, I just found out that, despite a long delay and a glimmer of hope that [...]

Once more this week (it happens about once a year), I found myself the object of scrutiny because I neither watch nor enjoy South Park.? And once again my interlocutors’ working assumption seemed to be that I must not like it because I’m some sort of prude who can’t get past dirty jokes to get [...]

$800,000 per annum raise for UGA head football coach
Yeah, that’s his raise. I could teach 57 years at UGA at my current pay rate and not match his raise. (I’d have to teach 200 years to match a year of his salary now.)
And people wonder why we TA’s don’t care about our [...]

I’ve now finished all but the marginal papers for the second round of freshman comp assignments.? (Why the marginal ones are marginal I can’t post here.)? As a group the papers weren’t bad, and a few really showed some acumen connecting the conventions and the content of particular Psalms and lyric poems.? But all the [...]

Here I am, avoiding the (digital) stack of papers before me, knowing full well that I’ve got a full day’s work between me and sleep again.
That said, I had a good week of teaching amid my stormy week at home, so I figure I ought to write a few words about it.? First the storms.? [...]

I hate double-grading.? Some time yesterday afternoon, when I had submitted my own last paper to my religion professor, and having finished grading all of my own freshman portfolios, I should have been done for the semester.? As it stands, I still have anywhere from six to nine hours of solid grading to go.? Granted, [...]

I was driving along the Atlanta Highway on my way to campus today (no, this is not going to be a “Love Shack” reference), and I was passing through one of the still-wooded corridors between Bogart and Athens.? The speed limit being 55, I was driving about 54.? (I’m a slow driver.)? All of a [...]

I was thinking about the bad rhetorical moves to which online discussions sometimes resort today. Among them are the passive-aggressive-reflexive straw man (e.g. “You just think that all of us pacifists are wimps, so you probably wouldn’t listen to me anyway”), the guilt-by-association riff (“Hitler would agree with you”), and the relativism gambit (“We’ll [...]

Well, we were Adelphia Cable customers for a year and a half, happily paying our nine bucks a month for basic cable.
Then Comcast bought out Adelphia a few months ago.
I got the notice today that they’re now charging me fourteen bucks a month for the same network channels.? The fifty-dollar-a-month packages didn’t go up, mind [...]

Well, I’ve got baby pictures at least…
I don’t know whether I can blame a lack of time for my paucity of posts lately. I’ve had spurts of free time between classes and teaching and parenting, but I’ve tended to do other things. I’ve played a few downs of Madden. I’ve watched a [...]