Audience Participation Day!

We haven't had one of these in a long, long time, and I'm not saying it's going to be a recurring thing, like, ever again, but I need something.



I just got this phone, my first-ever cell phone upgrade in five years, and--get this--it will actually play something other than rinky-dink midi-sounding crap when someone calls me, and it's so so easy to chop up an mp3 file into a thirty-second ringtone that even I can do it.




But the transition from picking one little midi file that I don't hate too much to hear three or four times a day out of a list of 20 or so was actually pretty simple; now I have about 6000 songs on my hard drive to choose from.




My question for you is, what is the most awesome ringtone ever? I need about a 30-second snippet of a song (sorry, the 8-minute "Mariner's Revenge" is out) or a sound effect that I will not only love, but that will make me seem even more awesome when other people hear it coming out of my pocket, and maybe also make them laugh, or believe that I am possibly the coolest person they know.

Begin Chastisement

You. Guys. Seriously. Just because my computer is not working and I cannot receive email notification of comments left on my blog does not mean that I won't know if you say anything or not. There is not, as far as I know, a blog out there devoted to my friends (real and internet) telling me I am cool, and that is the kind of reading I need to do every day.

Maybe you are not interested in my frank honesty about my silly internet crushes and how lame I was in high school. I get that, I really do. Then maybe you should say so, like "Erin, why don't you quit your bitchin' and stop stalking libertarians who are married to other people anyway." Or maybe you think you're so cool because you come over and read my blog, all smug-like, and think man, that drivel is so far beneath me I am going to go listen to some indie band no one has ever heard of over at Pandora instead of deigning to reply. To that I say, Yeah?! Prove it! If you're that much cooler than me, let's hear about it. Reading people's blogs is a privilege, guys; sometimes you've got to give a little in return.

So please. Give me something to do on the internet when I get home from school in the afternoon besides crossword puzzles.

/Chastisement

"Man Crushes"

Bad Astronomy has lately taken up the topic of man crushes, and, as a woman, I feel sort of left out of the loop, here.

I think the point of a man crush is that it is a strictly platonic male-bonding thing, and I'm sort of jealous that women don't have its equivalent. I think that women, even women who are very close friends, are constantly comparing themselves to one another. Then again, I'm just going off my own experience and 26 years of media exposure.

Plus, I'm worried about my legitimate girl crushes on Adam Savage and Nathan Fillion being that much more competitive, now that there are straight men in the running, as well. I mean, it's difficult enough thinking about all the women and gay men I'd have to beat down for a chance at running my fingers through Adam's short red hair, but the situation begins to look truly hopeless when I then add in all the straight men who "just want to be friends."

Who are your celebrity crushes (platonic or otherwise)? Why?

Because we haven't done this in a while...

I have an audience participation thingie for you. Defective Yeti wrote a program to help us all become more vocabularious. Here's what you have to do:

Click here. He'll explain everything so I don't have to. Choose the number of words you want (I did all 100, and it took about 40 minutes). Then, if you like, you can post your results on your own blog. Don't forget to come in here first to let us know how you did.

My own results are here, but do yours first because there are definitions on the chart, and you're not allowed to cheat!

Good luck!

The Audience Participation Monday You've All Been Waiting For

Today's APM comes directly from the editors at Glamour magazine, which I was forced to read for 55 minutes while I sat under the dryer turning my hair pink. Actually, I heard some similar stuff on NPR this morning, so I think that serves to legitimize this week's activity just a bit.

As we all know, by virtue of being teachers, or married to teachers, or students, or parents of students, graduation season is winding to a close. Graduation is often a time for gifts, and the one gift that everybody wants to give but no new graduate ever wants to receive is advice. (Hint: Graduates want money. Lots of money. And possibly new cars, but it's best to just give them the money for that, too.)

So in keeping with graduation season, tell us,

What is the best or worst advice you've ever gotten? Explain, if necessary.

Back-to-Work APM

Yes, I took the day off, too. And I had a sub today so I could go to another meeting and tell some other teachers at a SCARY-looking elementary school all about this thing I do to help monitor student progress. And APM today is so lame, you might think I'm still taking the day off.

Whatever. In two weeks, I don't have to work any more, and I think I'm already done in my head. (What that does mean is that I'll be checking in here a little more often.)

So while I was cleaning out the closet over the weekend, I found some cute shoes that, at one time, were rather redundant, but, not wanting to get rid of them, I put away in a box. It's been a tragic few weeks in the shoe department, what with several casualties due to age, wear, and crushing discomfort, and it was a pleasant surprise to find the square-toed, light tan Mary Janes, since I have absolutely no other summery shoes except plastic Walgreen's flip-flops. Anyway, I wore them today, and now have matching dime-sized blisters on my heels. Ick.

...

In a surprising departure from Girly Shoe Land, today's APM deals not with cute-but-painful shoes, but instead with blisters. Tell me about the most awkward blister you ever got, where it was, and how you got it.

Here's mine:

I was working at a Habit for Humanity house, assembling the kitchen cabinets from cheap particleboard kits. All I had was hand tools, and the pilot holes drilled in the pieces were all but worthless. After an hour of struggling, sweating, and muttering curses under my breath (I was, after all, representing my chapter of Amnesty International), I looked down at the palm of my hand, where I had been press-twisting on the screwdriver so hard, I had not only formed but already torn off a half-dollar-sized blister right in the center. There wasn't even any way to bandage it, so it stung constantly for a week, and got all stiff so I could barely write or eat with my right hand.

Plus, it was embarrassing, and there was no way after that they were going to let me play with the power tools.

Eponymous Legislation

Frustrated watching the Dems and Republicans wrangle over war funding bills? Dreading the threat of yet another presidential veto? Does the endless debate over proposed illegal immigration reforms make you want to throw up your hands, let an undocumented worker take over your job, and move away to another country? Do daily updates on congressional "progress" make you think you could do things better? Today's APM asks you to prove it.

First, check out this list of eponymous laws. It should give you some ideas, as well as a better sense of what "eponymous" means than just hearing me say it over and over.

Then, draft your own law about how the world really works. (Don't know what to call it? That's where eponymity comes in!) Be as clever or as technical as you wish; just remember that, given the choice between wit and correctness, most people prefer wit (Erin's law).

My Great Day

My perfect ordinary day would, naturally, be a day of summer vacation. As much as I may enjoy my job as a teacher of highly-intelligent, motivated kids, and my camaraderie with supportive staff, administration, and parents, summer vacation is still what I live for. I wake up at about six. Tyson is asleep next to me, and he's actually sleeping well. We live in a turn-of-the-century farmhouse in Idaho or Montana. Even though it is June, I need a jacket to go outside and feed all the animals. We have two sheep, two goats, two llamas, and three horses. Then I feed the cats, and saddle up my horse and we go take the dogs for a run. The air is cool and swollen with humidity. There will be thunderstorms later this afternoon. I go back to the house and make coffee, then go to my studio/office to work on my charcoal portrait I am working on. Or my comics. Or my writing. Or maybe I have some raku pots to fire or something.

At about ten, Tyson has made breakfast: oat-nut pancakes and scrambled eggs with ham and cheese. Nick crawls out of bed when he smells the pancakes. We eat breakfast at a table in the middle of the kitchen, with sunlight and the morning breeze coming in through the windows. (My kitchen is awesome, by the way. I still haven't decided whether to get the marble countertops or the custom-finished concrete, but the 6-burner stove has more BTUs than you can shake a stick at!)

After breakfast, the three of us take our bikes and climbing gear and ride out into the BLM land that sits at the back of our property. Three miles in, there is a granite/sandstone/basalt canyon with a tiny trout creek in it. I can lead a 5.10 and top-rope a 5.11b. I am wiry and strong, and I don't drop things or run into stationary objects anymore.

We eat apples and sandwiches before heading back to the house. Nick goes off to do teenager stuff with friends (just not sex/drugs/crime, we hope), leaving me and Tyson alone for the night. It's about three in the afternoon, and there's work to be done before it rains later. We spend an hour or so working in the yard, me tending the vegetables while Tyson lays paving stones or builds me a trellis or something manly and shirt-offy. We want to build an outdoor living area with a fire pit and everything, but right now we just have a cheap resin dining set and a veggie patch.

Inky black clouds blow in by five-thirty, and it pours--complete with lightening and thunder--for about an hour, tops. The sky clears with about an hour of light left before sunset. I bake bread or make something fabulous for dinner (tapas?), when our friends are coming over.

We eat dinner outside on the patio and there are no mosquitoes, just fireflies (maybe we have to import them from Iowa or something). My food is great, and then we watch movies or play a game in the living room. Maybe if the moon is out we take a moonlight paddle on the lake just down the street.

Our friends go home, and we have loud sex because there's nobody around to hear it, then we take showers in the huge glass-and-tile bathroom (renovated, of course). By then, we're so worn out just from the effort of having such a perfect life that we're just exhausted. We throw ourselves into the 500-count percale sheets and fall asleep.

Audience Participation Monday

You are getting sleepy.....

You close your eyes and begin to imagine....

Listen only to the calming sound of my voice (you'll have to imagine it; my lungs are still full of yellow gunk from last week)....

Regress into the tucked-away recesses of your mind....



Today's APM is a take-home assignment (if you wish, just visit the comments section and leave a link) asking you to do some positive visualization.

I know, I know, you're wondering what sort of crystal-magic, drippy-hippy, new-age, pseudo-spiritual mumbo-jumbo this is. But I seriously read it in another book--not a Deepak Chopra book, either. I am not making this one up.

Here's what I want you to do: Close your eyes. Then imagine the best...

Wait, wait, wait. Open your eyes again. You need to read the rest of the directions. Then you can close them.

After you close your eyes, reach ahead into the future. Go on a little mental time-travel trip, and imagine a perfect day, one that you would want to do again, and again, and again. Like if you got stuck in that movie Groundhog Day, which day would you not mind so much having to relive over and over. Start in the morning and continue all the way to the evening and describe this perfect day. The only caveat is that it has to be a normal day--no winning the lottery or getting deified or anything like that.

Because I expect many people to have a lot to say, you may write your response on your own blog and post a link on the participants section for us to follow. I will put mine in a separate post.

Everybody clear? Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines!

Sub Plans for Tuesday, 5/8

Dear Guest Blogger! Thank you for taking over my blog today while I am ill! You are appreciated.

Some general things you should know about our day:

1. Beginning the day: We usually start with some banter and news-sharing. Remember to let all participants have a turn!

2. Seatwork: All participants are expected to do their own work. Whispering voices are tolerated so long as volume remains low and all talking is assignment-related. If participants cannot follow these rules, they can complete their posts in silence for the remainder of the period.

3. Ending the day: Just before the end of the post, remind participants of key details of the assignment, asking if anyone needs clarification. Remind them that their assignment is due no later than next Monday, but that it may be completed early.

4. Attendance: Please make a note of any participants who are absent or tardy this week.

5. Discipline: You should not have any discipline problems, but should something unexpected arise, there are Take-Home Detentions and an assortment of referrals on my desk. You may also send any unruly participants to these other blogs.

Today's Assignment:

Weird Internet Stuff

1. Using the Internet, participants will locate and link to any webpage, gadget, or site of interest to them.

2. Participants will be able to (PWBAT) use the a href= protocol to create hyperlinks in their responses.

3. Finally, participants will examine links posted by others and generate well-reasoned, thoughtful critiques using proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

Please collect all assignments and leave for me upon my return.

Thank you! Have a great day!

E. Downey

Well, shit

It's Audience Participation Monday again, and I had the idea that we could work more on our story, seeing as how we haven't actually finished one yet, but it seems that Tammy has taken care of that one for us.

Because I had only about a half hour to come up with a plan, and Monday is a 12 hour day for me, and there are nachos and Guitar Hero waiting for me, today's game is simple.

Put on your PJs and fuzzy slippers 'cause this is a whole hellava lot like a slumber party game. No, we're not going to wait until someone falls asleep, freeze her underwear, and try to make her pee by putting one hand in warm water and one in cold. This game is called

IT SOUNDED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME...

and it is, like, the easiest APM yet. What have you done in the last 10 or so years that, in retrospect, may not have been the wisest decision you have made, even though it really, really seemed like an okay thing to do? If in the next few hours I (with your help, even) come up with some variation on it, I'll let you know. In the meantime, take it away, participants!

Same song, different verse...

...a little bit louder and a whole lot worse.

This week's Audience Participation Monday is a twist on last week's. Because I'm a little curious about what's on the other side of that door, we'll be continuing our APM Noir, except now it's gone from a film noir to an Ed Wood film. Fans of cheesy sci-fi, get yer ray guns up!

Babs, our tough-talking Brooklyner (Brooklynite? Brooklynese? Brooklyneer?) has been unceremoniously ousted from the offices of one Lazlo Kovaks. Let's leave Kovaks for later and focus on Babs. What multi-headed alien monsters await her behind the mysterious office door? What is in store for her?

So what's the catch? It seems like some people (and you know who you are) have been, for lack of a better word, hogging the yarn-spinning a bit, sometimes sending the narrative off in directions the rest of us are mildly confused by. Others of you are feeling intimidated when some among us shine a little too brightly (I'll be expecting a contribution from you this week, Brannon.). And some people just write weird shit.

It's time to level the playing field a bit. This week, you can only add to the story exactly seven words at a time. Not six, not eight, SEVEN. Articles count as a word. For strings of hyphenated words, count each word. I'll be happy to field any further clarification you may need as to the rules. After you have added your seven words, you have to wait to post again until at least one other person goes. In other words, you can't post twice in a row.

Are your warp drives ready? Your fazer-guns set to "stunning"?

It's time for the
EGALITARIAN HORDES FROM PLANET 7!!!

Audience Participation Monday

For APM, I seriously considered letting everyone make a list of times Tyson said what was true rather than what we would rather hear, but I figure you can do that in the comments over at his blog.

Today's activity is the most difficult one to date: we will craft another "story in the round" with an extra rule: you will not use any word containing a certain proscribed letter of the alphabet. As per Tyson's request, I will set two levels of difficulty, and we shall see on whose shoulders the laurels come to rest.

Our story recalls the classic 40s and 50s Film Noir style, starring a detective and a dame in distress. Think "Guy Noir" on Prairie Home Companion or that one episode of X-Files.

Our hero, Lazlo Kovacs, sits at his desk in a murky office, lit dimly by slits of light from the streetlamps, cutting the smoke-filled room. What happens next is your call. Remaining true to the genre, a blonde in a gabardine coat arrives, shows some thigh, and lights a cigarette, but that, readers, I leave in your capable hands.

Here are your letters:

E (if you're feeling up to it)

M (if you need training wheels first)

YESSSSSSS!

In one of those moments that, after the fact, seems inevitable, I landed the job at X High School, a job I have wanted since I first subbed there three years ago!!! Seriously, this school is so whitebread--70% Caucasian, 95% meets/exceeds standards in writing, 74% graduation rate (compared to 60% district-wide!)--it's like Warren-Walker with more public-school hoops to jump through, but a better benefits package to make up the difference. Plus it's a four-minute drive or about a 10-minute bike ride, so I can leave the house at the same time as I do now, about 6 a.m., but I'll be home by about 2:30, even staying late to grade/plan. (For some reason CCSD continues to ignore research about adolescents' sleeping patterns and makes them go to school from 7 to 1:15, but that's how I prefer it, anyway.) While I don't know the exact breakdown of the classes I'll be teaching, the official title is Honors American Literature, so I'm guessing I'll have at least two of those.

Anyway, it was SO EXCITING, and it's already becoming difficult to concentrate on the rest of this year. I even got a move-in date, just like a new house. I can't wait to see what great stuff comes in my room.

So everybody stop in at the comments section and congratulate me and tell me how great I am, natch, and then go back to the animal rhymes or what ever else ya'll have going on.

In which "Audience Participation Monday" happens on a Tuesday (again)

In honor of the poetry going on at Tyson's blog today, Audience Participation Monday is an activity I like to call

ANIMAL RHYMES.

It is probably the simplest one of these that we've done. You just make a sentence using some kind of animal name and some other word that rhymes with it. An even easier way to explain would be to give some examples.

"There are APES in the DRAPES!"
The frog lived in the peat bog.

...and so on. Mine are pretty tame, although it gives me a giggle to imagine someone's fine velvet curtains infested with primates. Let's see what else we can come up with!

Audience Participation Monday

It's that time again! Today we're going to play a game called "Round Robin." It's more fun than mutineering! (So says the ad campaign, anyway.)

Here's how it goes. It's easy, trust me. I'll start telling a story. Then I'll stop. Then each reader will head to the comments section and add the next piece to the story. When you add to the story, try to stop just before something exciting happens--it will give the next person a bit of a running start.

Since we've never done anything like this before, we'll keep it simple. The only rule is that what you add to the story has to make some kind of sense based on what has come before. Think "teamwork," not "postmodern non-objectivism."

Here goes:

"It was late at night on a Tuesday. Winchell looked at his watch and saw that it was past time for him to head home. As he locked his office, he heard a noise coming from the darkness behind him. He turned around..."

Audience Participation Monday!

It's Monday again, so it's time for some community involvement. With some creative accounting practices, maybe you could even count this as volunteer work on your CV.

Scenario: You are sentenced to life imprisonment. What you did is unimportant, but you are placed into solitary confinement for the rest of your natural life. In a rare gesture of goodwill, your warden allows you to take one book with you that you will have to spend reading and re-reading forever. What do you bring?

As usual, there is a caveat or two. One, it has to be published in one volume. The GRRM series won't count. I could only take half of my OED. It can, however, be an anthology or collected works of a single author; I doubt even the staunchest William Carlos Williams fan could read about the white chickens for the rest of his or her life. Finally, a books entitled How to Escape from Solitary Confinement, So You Want to Appeal Your Life Sentence, or any others of that ilk are cheating.

Part 2: Now imagine the warden is having a fantastic day and really wants to share the joy with you. Would you rather have a cat or a dog as a reading partner?

Just off the top of my head, I think I would probably bring a thorough collection of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. That probably makes me a rank-and-file English-major wannabe, but whatever. I'm sure some other inspiration will come to me in the middle of the night, but isn't that just what would happen in that scenario, that you're think of something better after you'd already chosen?
For a reading partner, I would definitely want a cat over a dog. I'd take Windsor, if I got to pick which one. Heck, if I had him, I might not even need anything to read.

Two Truths and a Lie

It's time for a game. Here's how it works. After reading this post, go to the "people who like me" (i.e., comments) link at the bottom of this post. That opens up the comments gadget, for those of you who haven't tried it yet. In your comment, rather than your usual glowing remarks about by wittiness and good looks, you will type 3 sentences. Two of them should be true statements about yourself and your life. One will be a lie that sounds true. It doesn't matter what order they are in.

This game is meant to be played as a kind of icebreaker for classes or co-workers to get to know each other. It becomes much more difficult when you're dealing with people who have known you all your life or live in the same house.

Here are mine:
1. I won't eat water chestnuts because of the sound they make when I chew them.
2. I named my cat Calamity Jane after the HBO show Deadwood.
3. The biggest scar I have is from dog food.

A few caveats on your lie: Don't say something like "My birthday is August 18th" when it is actually the 17th. That's a technicality, not a lie, and it's just not as fun that way. Yes, your goal is to stump my other five readers, but they shouldn't feel cheated if you do.

After you've done that, check back here to see who else said what. You can leave another comment if someone got the right answer, or you can email me at erinhdowney at cox dot net and I'll post the results next week. Have fun!

It's National Delurking Week!

That's right! The second week of January, all over the Blogosphere, has been designated National Delurking Week, which means all of ya'll that come in and read without leaving comments should click on the "comment" button below. I don't even require a sign-in, so you have no excuse! Let us hear from you!

Thursday Puzzler

Here's a puzzle for you. If I get some responses, maybe we'll make a full-fledged meme out of it.

A police detective is tracking known criminals in an attempt to locate their secret hideout. He follows two men to a warehouse. The first man approaches a door and presses a button next to the intercom. "Twleve," says a voice on the intercom. "Six," the suspect replies. The door swings open and he enters the building.

The second suspect approaches the door and presses the intercom button. "Six," comes the voice out of the speaker. "Three," replies the suspect. The door is unlocked, and he enters the warehouse.

"Oh, this is too easy," the detective says to himself. "It's almost as though these guys want to get caught."

With one hand ready on his gun, the detective leaves his hiding place and presses the intercom button. "Ten," says the speaker. "Five," the detective says in his best criminal voice.

Seconds later, the detective is surrounded by criminals who stand circling him, guns aimed at his head.

What should the detective have answered?