So congrats to Brent and Laura; you’re both amazing people, and I know you’ll be amazing together. I couldn’t be happier.

What was a talented, beautiful, successful woman doing with this jerkoff in the first place? In “Irreplaceable” she’s living with a guy, buying him expensive presents… and he’s so special she can have another guy just like him “in a minute?” It begs the question, is it feminist to be proud of yourself for dumping a guy you never should’ve gone out with to begin with? Now, all of us have those relationships… the “what was I thinking” times. And we all should be proud of ourselves for getting out of that. But to feel feminist for dating a low rent, cheating gigolo, ditching him, and then writing a chipper song about how he never meant anything to you… well, I dunno. There seems to be a fundamental flaw there.

I’ve been to two movies in the past two weeks. That doubles the number I’ve been to all year. Yes. Really. I never go to the movies anymore. And what brings me forth into the dark? You can’t guess? Bond and vampires.

I really dug Quantum of Solace. The reboot of Bond has done, in my opinion, wondrous things for a franchise that had become a mockery of itself. Daniel is my kind of 007 - charming, but more importantly, lethal. Daniel Craig’s Bond actually looks like he could, physically and emotionally, kill somebody. And I really like that he occasionally looks like he got the crap beaten out of him. On a lighter note, read the cast list at the end… you’ll find Ms Fields’ first name.

Twilight… was… better than I expected it to be. Except for (a)this completely retarded sequence in the forest (the “reveal” scene) which involved lots of jumpy cameras, actors in slow motion angst, and the most craptastic special effects I’ve seen since the early 90s and (b)these god-awful sepia-toned “backstory” shots, which made me laugh, and not in a “good job with the funny” sort of way. The script, for the most part, was pretty good, and the leads were fine. I even liked Cedric Diggory, who I was completely not convinced about going in. Although, and this is my other beef with the film, Pattinson looks nowhere in the vicinity of 17 years old, and seriously, what male who died in 1918 would have hair even vaguely resembling that, oh, and what color is his skin? Is it French Revolution powder white or normal tan or… whatever that color is in this scene? Pick one. And then there was Carlisle, who looked like he was dipped in a vat of talc. However, Pattinson pulls the role off with a nice panache and a subtle/campy sense of humor that tempered the ever-present angst very nicely. It might be possible that I liked him better in the movie than I did in the book. Oddly enough, I think my favorite part of the movie was Charlie. He didn’t look at all like the Charlie in my head, but the way they pulled off his adoration of his daughter without ever having him say it outloud, was really cool.

So… goods and bads. I’m kinda hoping that with another go ’round - I’ve heard rumor they’re filming New Moon and Eclipse back-to-back, and with Pattinson not getting any closer to 17, I think that’s a good call - they’ll nail it a little more solidly. I think they can.

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§ 21.459. BIBLE COURSE TRAINING. (a) The commissioner shall develop and make available training materials and other teacher training resources for a school district to use in assisting teachers of elective Bible courses in developing:

(1) expertise in the appropriate Bible course curriculum;

(2) understanding of applicable supreme court rulings and current constitutional law regarding how Bible courses are to be taught in public schools objectively as a part of a secular program of education;

(3) understanding of how to present the Bible in an objective, academic manner that neither promotes nor disparages religion, nor is taught from a particular sectarian point of view;

(4) proficiency in instructional approaches that present course material in a manner that respects all faiths and religious traditions, while favoring none; and

(5) expertise in how to avoid devotional content or proselytizing in the classroom.

(b) The commissioner shall develop materials and resources under this section in consultation with appropriate faculty members at institutions of higher education.

(c) The commissioner shall make the training materials and other teacher training resources required under Subsection (a) available to Bible course teachers through access to in-service training.

(d) The commissioner shall use funds appropriated for thepurpose to administer this section.

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Yes. In Texas, part of our education code provides a method for teaching the Bible. ‘Cause we’re Texas. Do you think they would let a Wiccan teach that?

This is the from the transcript of the VP debate recorded by CQ Transcriptions and used by the New York Times. To put this in context, Palin gave her spiel  about bringing Wasilla to Washington, and Biden responded with something about how the dems understand the common man (like anyone in government - Biden OR Palin - understands middle class America anymore), but that middle class American life has not improved over the last eight years, and McCain has voted with Bush on almost everything.

PALIN: Say it ain’t so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he’s a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here’s a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.

Education credit in American has been in some sense in some of our states just accepted to be a little bit lax and we have got to increase the standards. No Child Left Behind was implemented. It’s not doing the job though. We need flexibility in No Child Left Behind. We need to put more of an emphasis on the profession of teaching. We need to make sure that education in either one of our agendas, I think, absolute top of the line. My kids as public school participants right now, it’s near and dear to my heart. I’m very, very concerned about where we’re going with education and we have got to ramp it up and put more attention in that arena.

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I agree. Education in America needs improvement. Teachers need to get paid better. If nothing else, the candidates (and current president’s) ability to speak English shows this. In honor of Biden and Palin’s momentous occasion, I post for you Saturday Night Live.

So, I challenged my senior advanced classes to write their own conceits. Of note, we used a fictional “our”; the poem we were basing this on was about “our marriage”, so a lot of people wrote conceits about “our love” or “our relationship” that is referring to a fictional relationship between themselves and some random person. This is very important to remember as you read. My favorite for the day was “Our relationship is like a big toe. I take it for granted, almost don’t notice it, but if it were broken, not only would I be in pain, but I couldn’t function like myself.” There was also “revenge is like a kiwi - ugly on the outside, but so sweet in the center” and “our love is like whipped cream - so sweet, but soon will dissolve into nothing.” Have you noticed that my kids are brilliant? Yeah, I think so, too.

So, we had a contest for who could come up with the most bizarre conceit in each class. Yeah, the toe won one period. But for my other class, after everybody has announced theirs, one guy says, “I have another one I want to submit instead. Our relationship is like a sandwich.” And I ask him to explain (because, as I said at the beginning of class, if it’s obvious how they’re connected, it isn’t a conceit), and he says, “I’ll leave it up to your imagination,” and I, being an idiot, say, “You have to explain it or it doesn’t count.” So he smiles and answers me, “Our relationship is like a sandwich. It’s better with my meat.”

And the class loses it to laughter. Of course, there’s a couple people trying to explain how it’s possible that that isn’t dirty, but whatever. So I nod and give a short chuckle, because this is actually a very nice guy who’s said this - not like one of the guys who’s normally rude, or I probably would’ve said something - and then move on to take nominations for who’s going to win “craziest conceit” of the class, hoping the uproar will die down. Fat chance. Of course “Sandwich” gets nominated. I turn back to the class and say, “OK, I’m going to write this down on the nomination list, but there is a difference between a joke and a conceit. A conceit needs to be an extended metaphor. Can you extend that?” And a little voice in the back of my head says, “Did I just ask a student to extend his meat?”  Snickers, and then another student says, “Of course. It’s better in a footlong.”

I’ve never before cracked up laughing so hard I had to turn around and face the board. And that was my day at school today.

Hmm… and now that I found the pumpkin pancakes, I’ve found that W&S has three whole pages on pumpkin recipes, including a soup that looks amazing. Oh, W&S, you are a very tempting devil.

In my area of the world, the deadline is Monday Oct. 6. Are you registered?

But cleaning does give me time to think, and usually its the “cleaning and sorting my life” sort of thinking. I guess they go well together. I always try to juggle too many things in my life, and the problem with that is not that I have too long a list, but that all the things I juggle are HUGE. And all of them are dear to my heart. But somehow in life, the wrong things end up on top, like my job, instead of my home, my family, my friends, my faith. I think that a lot of people make this mistake. Part of me says that if I took care of things in the right order, that everything would run more smoothly, but work is constantly running behind - behind on grading, behind on the play, behind on whatever asinine paperwork I’m supposed to be completing - that the idea of putting it further down my list sounds like a disaster.

I’m the type of person that loves to make personal schedules (work out here, work on next novel here, clean house here), and then can’t stick with them. Obviously I’m not making a schedule I can live with. But cleaning the sink made me feel, for a little while at least, that maybe I could.

I also thought a lot about writing. I have wanted to be a writer ever since I was a kid; I grew up with my nose in a book and a pen in my hand. For the last couple years I’ve finally decided to get serious about it, but, like most worthwhile things, it has been hard. I had given up on being a novelist around the age of 16 because I convinced myself I couldn’t compose an entire novel; they were just too long. But then last January I proved my 16 year old self wrong. Now I’m restructuring, reworking, retooling, re-everything-ing.

It’s interesting; when you tell people you’re working on a novel, one of the many responses is something to the effect of “Do you see all the crap that gets published? You can do it if they can.” This is, of course, meant as a compliment; someone is saying that after assessing my intelligence, they have deemed me more competent than the drivel they’ve read. I do appreciate this, I guess, and it is funny how many writers I know (myself included) that have been comforted by reading a “what-the-hell-was-everyone-thinking-when-they-paid-for-this” novel. But I realized [as I scrubbed a particularly stuck smooch of toothpaste] that that just isn’t good enough. Not only because I don’t want to waste my time tracking down the one agent and editor combo willing to publish garbage, but because I have absolutely no desire for anyone to ever say, “Well did you read that book by JC Garren? Yeah, if she can get published, so can you.” I’m better than that, and my characters deserve more than that.

So, bring on your rejections, your criticisms, and, if you have any, your compliments. I will take it. I may ignore the parts I disagree with, but I want to be good. And that means learning my craft.

I had other thoughts while cleaning the bathtub and the toilet, but I’ll save you from those.

We’re working on our own version of Alice in Wonderland for presentation in December. As always, I’m awed and amazed at my students’ creative abilities and desire to create a beautiful production that works as a whole. Anybody who thinks that teenagers are lazy or selfish doesn’t work with them; they are the greatest group of hopeful, intelligent people and so full of possibilities for what can be.

We’ve divided up into groups, and some are working on costumes, set pieces, or different pieces of the props. I’ll give them a problem (”how do we make hedgehogs the croquet sequence?” or “The back right corner of the stage needs something tall that people can climb on and that has a child-like quality to it) and they come up with a solution (”build paper mache hedgehogs covered with fabric fur on top of radio controlled cars” and “create 2′ and 3′ blocks, like the kind with letters on them, paint characters and items from the show on them instead of letters, and stack them”), give me a supply list for me to retrieve over the weekend, and start construction on the next week (we have a sample hedgehog - it works beautifully, and the framing for the blocks has started. I have the most amazing kids. And no, I’m not in some rich, feted district, for those of you thinking that. Teenagers want to do good work. And, I’m convinced, theater attracts the coolest people.

So… next time somebody tells you that the youth of America are a sad lot, tell them they are ridiculously wrong.