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This picture has been classified a Weapon of Mass Destruction by the UN due to excessive cuteness.

Sigh.

As we inch closer to the disappearance of the House Atreides, I find myself getting slowly used to my new/old name. It's weird; it's my rightful name, but I have never carried it, so it will be as new to me as it will be to Elli. Writing it on the invitations was odd, but also right.

Of course, I'm using it only unofficially at this time; it won't become my true legal name until after the ceremony in June. So I'm still Michael Atreides at work, school, etc.

I am Split-Personality Man.

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Saturday afternoon, in a six hour marathon, I finished the rough draft of my ten-page paper on Messianic Structures in the Dune trilogy (that being the first three books; as they were conceived and written as a trilogy from the start -- the other three books were conceived of many years later). Tonight I'll finish editting it and then print it out for submission tomorrow. Then I get to start on my penultimate paper, on Moby Dick. This one will focus on Ahab as a Byronic hero, and the whale as Divine Punishment for his hubris. Sounds fun, no?

Rant: Literature and High School Kids

A few days back, a dear friend said that she hoped I could update the reading lists when I'm teaching, because as good as the classics are, they don't resonate with kids today.

To that I say: Rubbish.

First, I will not be able to do much in that regard unless I become an administrator. I might be able to choose works other than what have always been used, but I'll still be working within rather strict curricular boundaries.

Second, and more important: While I will concede that many teenagers don't get why Bartleby the Scrivener or Young Goodman Brown or the like can apply to them, that's hardly a reason to not teach them. A teacher's job is to MAKE the work resonate with the students -- to show them, through lecture and guided discussion, WHY the work still resonates.

I submit that there is a difference between a work "resonating" with a teen and a teen understanding that resonance. Of Mice and Men has a lot that is still applicable to teenagers (and adults) today; do we stop teaching it because some spoiled teenagers that grew up on MTV don't understand why it's important? Do we stop teaching Shakespeare because teenagers who haven't yet been taught about him don't get how the words of a man who's been dead for 300 years can possibly apply to them?

No. We teach Shakespeare by showing them HOW it applies to our lives today -- or, I should say, we guide them to discovering how it applies to them. How many among us have been infatuated with someone our families don't like? How many among us have chosen for a significant other someone who thrills us, but is horribly bad for us? How many of us have let our own flaws lead us into disaster time and time again? All of these things can be gathered from Shakespeare.

Herman Melville and Nathanial Hawthorne wrote about America. I don't just mean that their stories were set in America, I mean that their stories are allegorical commentaries on the American experience. Hawthorne believed America was tainted by our Puritan past, that the evil the Puritans did was handed down to us and will always haunt our culture. And in the last few years, diaries of that time have been discovered that make it absolutely clear that the horrible things he wrote about really did happen, and far more commonly than anyone had theorized.

I say all this, of course, without having taught yet. I'm sure there will be days I'll be as disillusioned as it is possible to be, and I'll rely on my wife and my friends to keep me level. But right now? Right now, I'm filled with a righteous fire. I need to be a good teacher -- not just a teacher who reads the works and gives tests, but a teacher who can motivate students to understand that which they don't want to bother with.

They don't have to like it. They don't even have to agree with me about the significance of a piece -- but they do have to understand it. And it's my job to guide them to that understanding.

Because I'm bored and there are 45 minutes until my next class.

If there is at least one person in your life whom you consider a close friend, and whom you would not have met without the internet, post this sentence in your journal.

100 Sci Fi Classics Meme

I don't know where the list comes from, so don't ask.

You've all played this game before. Copy list. Bold the ones you've read. Promulgate. Canadian Stalwart waiwode is the one from whom I took it.

( Ready, steady, GO! )

City meme!

American Cities That Best Fit You:

65% San Francisco

55% Boston

55% Honolulu

55% Washington, DC

50% Chicago

Which American Cities Best Fit You?