Thanksgiving
Turkey, stuffing, dressing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, fruit salad, key lime pie, and boxed wine. Of course, I don't eat stuffing, dressing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, fruit salad, or key lime pie and I don't drink boxed wine, so I pretty much just eat turkey. And if my dad cuts the meat of the drumstick rather than let me have my turkey leg, I'm going to find a new family.

Cowboys and Lions
It's going to be so exciting to watch two top-notch football squads this Thursday: the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions. I'm go glad the NFL clings so desperately to meaningless and unfair traditions. There's no better way to be set up for the disappointment of my dad cutting the meat off the drumstick than by wallowing in six hours of Cowboys and Lions football.

Black Friday
Every year Black Friday, that crazy shopping day following Thanksgiving, makes me thankful that I no longer work in retail. I don't know how I spent so many years going in to work at 5 in the morning (or earlier) to enable cheapskate scumbags in their shameless materialism.

Fallout
I am going to play the crap out of some video games this week. Two days off means two extra days to spend gaming. I have a Destroy All Humans game that received terrible reviews (that's bad), but I can still run around giving people anal probes (that's good).

End of NaNoWriMo
Although the month of November doesn't end this week, the teaching of NaNoWriMo in my classes does. Although I've enjoyed having the opportunity to participate in NaNoWriMo with my classes, who have for the most part exceeded my expectations, I will be glad to return to more traditional lessons and actual teaching. Short stories, Poe, and timed writes will be a fun way to end the semester.

Paper Airplanes with Doug Lemov

World Cinema. Junior year of university. The teacher showed up the first day with her husband and her lawyer in tow. I remember the husband wearing a giant Dr. Who-esque scarf. He didn't take it off, even though we were indoors, which struck me as odd. Anyway, the reason the teacher (whose name I can't remember) brought her lawyer was because she believed the Rutgers administration was conspiring against her. She spent the entire class telling us how Rutgers was misogynistic, how they didn't want her teaching anymore, and how they were trying to force her out by making her undergo a psychiatric evaluation. I have no idea how much of this was true, but it made for an awkward and off-putting first day.

Now if being awkward and off-putting were the calling cards of being a bad teacher, then I would be the worst teacher in history. This professor wasn't my first teacher because of her paranoid ramblings, she was my worst teacher because she actively avoided anything that had to do with the actual class, and mocked people who tried to get her on track.

During the course of her rantings, there were a couple of brave souls (not me of course, I probably was sitting quietly, reading a Nabokov novel) who decided to ask perfectly reasonable questions like, "Is there a syllabus for this class?" or "What movies will we be watching?" Instead of using these questions as an opportunity to actually teach a film class, the professor instead belittled the students, claiming that a syllabus didn't have anything to do with film and the a film class was about much more than watching movies. Eventually one or two people got up to leave (in the little film screening room in Milledoler Hall, you had to walk down to the front of the room and past the teacher in order to leave; there's no easy way to sneak out unnoticed.) and the teacher would stop her tirade to call attention to the students, sarcastically asking them, "Oh, don't you want to learn about film?" or something like that. It was disgraceful, to the point where the milquetoast husband tried to calm the professor down.

Now, I have nothing against sarcastically belittling students; it's one of the job perks of being a teacher. But a teacher should never create a situation where people who are interested in learning are shouted down and discouraged. This professor was my worst teacher ever because she taught a class that led people to go straight to the registrar's office and drop the class. Teachers certainly can't inspire a love of their subject in all students, but the very least they should do is make sure that students don't go from being interested in a subject to hating it.

Fortunately, at the next class session there was a sign on the door saying that the class would be meeting in a different classroom, with a different teacher. The class was smaller, as the first professor scared people off, but for those of us who were too lazy to drop the class, it ending up being a great experience. It's good to know that for every awful teacher out there, there are numerous better and more engaging teachers to hopefully re-inspire students.

January 20, 2006: Hello? North Dakota?

I have a very weird, probably unique, pet peeve. I have never heard anyone else express this pet peeve, and I'm not even sure I can explain it as well as I'd like. I guess you could call my pet peeve the violation of proper drive thru menu protocol.

It's not a catchy pet peeve (I'm not even sure if protocol is the correct word (etiquette could work as well)), but it annoys me to no end. On days when I don't feel like cooking, or going to the grocery store to get something to cook, or taking something out of my freezer to cook, I will sometimes stop off for some fast food. Since I loathe the presence of strangers near my personal space, I always use the drive thru. I'm sure you are a familiar with the common drive thru. There is a menu near the ordering intercom, so patrons can look at the menu when they order. And at many of the fast food restaurants in my neck of the barren desert, there is also a menu one or two car length prior to the ordering menu, so cars waiting in line can prepare their order. My pet peeve is when there is no one in line and a car will pull up and stop at the first menu, rather than pulling forward to the ordering menu, like any sensible and responsible citizen would.

Why do people think it is necessary to stop at a menu when they have unimpeded access to a menu that they will have to stop at eventually anyway? And why do people even need to stop and look at a fast food menu? It's fast food. You get a burger and fries or maybe chicken nuggets and fries. It's not like the Burger King has a soup of the day.

Now some of you might be saying, "But Shawn, you are clearly understating the diversity of the modern American fast food menu! What if someone wants to choose from a selection of salads or wraps?" A valid point, but anyone who goes to a fast food restaurant for "healthful" selections clearly doesn't understand how life is supposed to work.

Fast food is not good for you. It never has been and it never will be. Fast food is for when you're feeling gluttonous or lazy and you just have to get your hands on an overpriced, overcooked patty of preservatives and hormone-infused beef shavings. If you want a salad, go to the grocery store. (The sell salads in bags. Buy a bag, open it, and eat salad.) If you want a wrap, go to Subway. In homogenized suburbia, if there is a fast food restaurant, there will probably be a Subway.

So if you are planning on making a trip to the local fast food eatery, maybe to pick up a 50-pack of McNuggets or the mythical Mc10:35, please, please have the decency to use the proper menu. Unnecessarily waiting at the non-ordering menu is not only a waste of your time, it is disrespectful to the employees and other customers or you local fast food eatery.