Twenty Questions on my Thirtieth Birthday

Yesterday was December 21, the shortest day of the year.

Today is December 22, and the days lengthen.

The ancients called this day Sol Invictus, or “The Unconquered Sun”.

Also on this day, I was born.

Every year since I moved from Pennsylvania, Mom calls me at 7:15 in the morning on my birthday because that’s when I was born.

This year was no exception, and it was wonderful.

I was going to make a pun about being the Unconquered Son, but some might view that as borderline heresy/blasphemy.

However, I’m ready for those people. Thanks to Monty Python, I always expect the Spanish Inquisition.

Anyway, now that my mother is officially “old” according to her, I thought I’d do a little self-examination and answer twenty questions about myself.

1. What are some nicknames you’ve acquired over the years?

JP, James, General, PJ

Please note that my listing of these names should not be construed as a blanket invitation to use these names.

Never, ever, under any circumstances should the names “JP” or “PJ” be used.

I will rise from the dead and haunt you, exacting my revenge until the end of your days. And then I’ll continue my persecution in the afterlife.

Just don’t do it.

Only one person in the world may call me “James”; I’ll simply correct the rest of you.

Anyone and everyone may call me “General” but I’ll probably question why you’re calling me that as the nickname was given by a certain group of friends in college.

2. What are you favorite colors?

My favorite colors are black and green.

For those who say black is not a color, we should talk sometime.

3. Do you have a favorite bird and/or animal?

I like the pre-feathered velociraptors, wolves (but not as much as when I was in high school), and cats – yes, Smokey has converted me from a dog person to a cat person.

4. Is there a creature that intrigues you, but also freaks you out a little?

Spiders, and let’s leave it at that.

5. How old do you really feel?

I’ve often been told I’m an old man trapped in a young man’s body, so I can honestly say my age is growing into my attitude (or something like that).

Mr Tom and I think alike on many things, and he’s 97.

My father-in-law and I also enjoy many of the same things, and he’s in his mid-50s.

Have I answered the question? I really can’t tell.

6. Do you have a song you struggle to admit you love?

No, I’m very honest about the music I love, hate, or love to hate.

7. Are there any film(s) you’ve seen more than 10 times?

The Godfather Trilogy

They’re all good; I don’t care about public opinion regarding Part III.

Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, and Jurassic Park III

Again, I like them all.

A Christmas Story

The Hogfather

I’m certain there’s more, but I feel these are probably the important ones.

8. Is there a planet and/or star system you feel resonates with you?

Pluto and Betelgeuse

9. Is there a food and/or beverage you just can’t stand?

shrimp, Brussels sprouts, iced coffee (coffee over ice; I like other cold, coffee-based drinks just fine)

10. What personal trait(s) you can only apologize for?

My inability to read social cues.

11. Personal traits you will never apologize for?

I feel this question is best answered with a picture:

I received this shirt as a birthday present from a friend who also shares a December 22nd birthday.

We know the struggle, and the struggle is real.

12. Say you were in a position of power; what one thing would you remove from society?

What position of power are we talking about, exactly?

I’ll assume President of the United States (since that’s (a) the country in which I live and (b) the position that would allow me to affect societal change in some way).

Oh, I can only remove one thing?

That’s tough . . . how about . . .

ignorant voting.

Good thing you didn’t ask me how.

13. Now, what one thing would you add to society?

Fully-funded libraries

14. Country you’d like to visit before you kick the bucket?

Deutschland (aka Germany)

15. What one thing would you like to learn to do even if you think it’s impossible?

Draw; right now, my stick figures have advanced-stage leprosy.

16. What word(s) do you say far too often?

As a teacher, I find myself saying “focus” all too often.

Outside the classroom, I probably say “Well, actually” far too much.

17. Is there a sound you really like?

Coffee brewing

18. What number(s) do you feel connected to?

19. What super-power would you like to have?

I’d like to be able to read minds when I choose to.

None of this “read everyone’s mind all the time so the world never shuts up and I go crazy from all the inaudible noise” mess. I want to be able to turn it on/off, too.

This would solve that “social cues” problem I mentioned earlier.

20. Name one book/text you would recommend to your peers:

I’m going to name two, because it’s my birthday.

Dante’s Divine Comedy

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Something else you want me to answer or know more about?

Let me know in the comments!

Have a suggestion for a poem, photograph, or future post?

Drop a note in the prompt box!

Don’t forget to follow me on:

Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.

Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?

Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.

Tuesday, 22 December, 2015

Teaser Tuesday: The Relic Master

Along with my 30th Birthday, the Wheel of Time has brought ’round

Just in case you don’t know, Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! All you have to do is grab the book you’re currently reading, open to a random page and share a few sentences from that page. But make sure you don’t share any spoilers!*

*I wish I could take credit for this introduction, but I shamelessly stole it from Heather over at bitsnbooks. To help me make amends, you should go check out her blog.

In terms of reading, I haven’t left the Renaissance, but I have traded nonfiction for historical fiction.

This week, I’m reading The Relic Master a work of historical fiction by Christopher Buckley featuring one of my favorite Northern Renaissance artists, Albrecht Dürer, and a plot to forge a relic for his patron – a relic known to us as the Shroud of Turin.

The Truly Random Number Generator sends us to page 264:

The Duke reached inside his cloak and produced a 
large key. The archdeacon produced a second key. 
Two archbishops wearing miters appeared from 
behind a curtain. Each in turn produced a key. 
Dismas eliminated any notion of obtaining four 
separate keys from four different people.

The plot thickens!

In Retrospect

I’ve just about finished Heretics and Heroes: How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World by Thomas Cahill and have found it intriguing, engrossing, and otherwise enjoyable. No spoilers on the star-rating, though; you’ll have to come back next week (or keep track of me on Goodreads)

Coming Soon

I’m not sure what will be next, but I plan to have a number in mind for the 2016 Goodreads Challenge.

What have you been reading?

Have a suggestion for a poem, photograph, or future post?

Drop a note in the prompt box!

Don’t forget to follow me on:

Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.

Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?

Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.

Tuesday, 22 December, 2015

Monday Morning Grievance: Christmas Songs

It’s Monday and I haven’t had my coffee.

Well – truth be told – I’m drinking my coffee right now while enjoying a blueberry Pop-Tart, grading projects, and listening to Christmas songs.

I don’t know about you, but I actively avoid Christmas songs until after the family’s Thanksgiving Dinner. After that, it’s all Christmas all the time – at least on the radio. However, there are certain songs that make me want to give it a thumbs down on Pandora, throw the radio out the window, or at the very least start a heated discussion with anyone who will listen as to why the song annoys me. Changing the channel might be rational, but it gives no satisfaction.

Top Ten Annoying Christmas Songs:

10. Mele Kalikimaka (Hawaiian Christmas) is one of those songs that just rubs me the wrong way. There’s nothing actaully wrong with the song – some current college students would probably protest it for “cultural appropriation” – but I’ve got no reason for disliking it other than it’s simply a bad song with a grating tune and even worse lyrics.

9. It Came Upon A Midnight Clear might seem like an innocent Christian hymn concerning the birth of Jesus Christ, but take a look at the last verse:

For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When, with the ever-circling years,
Shall come the Age of Gold;
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And all the world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.

When, with the ever circling years,
Shall come the Age of Gold;

Last time I checked we no longer subscribed to the ancient Greek view of cyclical history, yet here Christians are literally singing its praises. Come on, now; get with the current millennium.

8. Bad Little Boy is a tale of manipulation. Lets take a look at what this kid has done, shall we?

He put a gerbil in his sisters basinette, the same baby sister he’s physically assaulted looking for the soft spot in her head.

He went for a joy ride on the lawn mower down to the candy store.

He told his mom about his brother’s dirty magazines.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, but he certainly won’t get anything from his brother for that act of snitchery.

He also used said brother’s model rocket in an attempt to make an astronaut of the neighbor’s cat, so we can add thievery and animal cruelty to the list.

He put his Grandma in the hospital after demonstrating his Power Ranger kick.

Yet, he still expects his Grandpa to spoil him rotten – assuming he doesn’t find out about using his Big Bertha driver to hit rocks.

So, I guess the lesson we’ve learned is one can do all manner of unspeakable things and it’s all OK so long as no one finds out. Sounds right.

7. Christmas Don’t Be Late might be a fine kid’s song, even if it is a little greedy. It’s the Chipmunks I cannot stand. Those voices just need to end. Now.

6. Santa Baby is unforgivable. We can excuse the wants of the Chipmunks; Christmas is for kids, after all. But a grown woman with the wants of the nouveau riche? Using this list and the inflation calculator, the total cost of those goodies runs to a whopping

$1 186 540 516.22

We can round it to a nice 1.2 billion dollars just to be safe. Chump change, am I right? I mean, we can probably find that in the couch cushions.

I’m getting her coal, and by golly she’ll be happy with it.

5. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus put parents in a tight spot: to either let their kid believe that mommies routinely engage in extramarital affairs with a holiday spirit or to let them in on the secret that there’s no such thing as Santa.

Personally, I’ve proven a bit unreliable on that front. I almost ruined Christmas for Krystal’s young cousin when I told him I’d shot Santa. I assumed Kindergarteners either knew the truth already or were smart enough to figure it out on their own.

Historical lessons on the real St. Nicholas don’t generally go over very well at that age, either; although my high school students get a chuckle out of my poem.

Every year Krystal and I get into some discussion on what we’d teach our own kids if we ever had any. She wants them to believe in Santa, which I’m personally fine with as long as I can convince them Krampus and/or Belsnickel is real, too. I’ll just leave that there.

Anyway, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” is just a bad song and it needs to be pulled from the air.

4. Last Christmas contains these wonderful lyrics:

Last Christmas
I gave you my heart
But the very next day you gave it away
This year
To save me from tears
I'll give it to someone special.

Because what’s Christmas for if not a rebound relationship with the possibility of inciting jealousy and fulfilling a revenge fantasy?

3. Straight No Chaser 12 Days of Christmas simply makes no sense. It’s not the twelve days of Christmas and incorporates lyrics that make absolutely no sense.

Twelve drummers drumming like Olympus above the Serengeti

What does this even mean? Olympus is in Greece, the Serengeti in Africa. So confusing, and definitely not Christmas.

2. Baby It’s Cold Outside is simply wrong. Hey, kids – if you want that special someone to spend the night and then some (and they just won’t listen to your totally reasonable aruments) it’s perfectly fine to get them drunk first. Still no success? Try spiking their drink! Roofies: the gift that keeps on giving.

1. Christmas Shoes

Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my mama, please.
It's Christmas eve and these shoes are just her size.
Could you hurry, sir, 
      daddy says there's not much time;
You see she's been sick for quite a while,
And I know these shoes would make her smile,
And I want her to look beautiful, 
      if mama meets Jesus tonight.

Who decided this was a Christmas song?

It’s like someone said “Hey everyone – Christmas is a time for family, friends, and loved ones; nothing says that better than a tragic death in the life of a young child.”

And the deluded ones said “We have a hit! Let’s play it at least twice an hour for thirty days.”

You sadists.

What Christmas Songs Annoy You?

Have a suggestion for a poem, photograph, or future post?

Drop a note in the prompt box!

Don’t forget to follow me on:

Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.

Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?

Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.

Monday, 21 December, 2015

Teaser Tuesday: Heretics and Heroes

Exam week is here; time to test my students’ knowledge of the last eighteen weeks.

Boethius’ Wheel may bring my students low (I sincerely hope not), but it has brought me Fortune, with the Wheel of Time turning to

*I wish I could take credit for this introduction, but I shamelessly stole it from Heather over at bitsnbooks. To help me make amends, you should go check out her blog.

In regards to last week’s question regarding the ethics of gaming the Goodreads Challenge, I decided to keep reading at my normal pace and then adjust my reading challenge just before it ends on 1 January.

I’m currently reading Heretics and Heroes: How Renaissance Artists and Reformation Priests Created Our World, part of Thomas Cahill’s “Hinges of History” series. I’ve heard good things about Cahill’s series, particularly How the Irish Saved Civilization, but this is the first of his books I’ve actually read.

The Truly Random Number Generator sends us to page 310:

In the seventeenth century we come upon 
extraordinary examples of believers who 
have internalized their faith so personally 
and deeply that it has lost all comradeship 
with the combative religious assertions of 
the partisans who waged the Thirty Years' War.
In these later figures there is also no verbal
indirection, no hiddenness. Their faith is boldly
stated, yet utterly lacking in aggression.

This particular excerpt interests me as I just finished teaching the German Wars of Religion and the overarching effects of the Peace of Westphalia. I can hardly wait to read the 309 pages leading up to it.

In Retrospect

Station Eleven earned 4 stars. I found the characters somewhat flat and the driving plot a tad underwhelming; however, the cardinal sin was the lack of books. For a novel based on the survival of Shakespeare post-apocalypse, almost nothing is said of libraries and the written word (aside from the eponymous Station Eleven – a comic book existing only in the novel [for now] – and some allusions to a vampire series I haven’t read). Instead, people moan about the lack of electricity and, therefore, the internet. Come on people, libraries still exist! Plagues don’t kill books! I mean, maybe people burned the books for fuel, but nowhere did I see this mentioned. Anyway, there had to be people who’d rather die that burn human knowledge. So, why did it still get four stars? I gave it four stars because I felt it accurately portrayed what the world post-apocalypse would be like: largely boring with brief periods of intense excitement. And, despite it’s faults, I really liked it. So there.

Coming Soon

My library continues to surprise me. I returned V for Vendetta, The Buried Giant, and Station Eleven; when I checked the New Arrivals shelf, I found a copy of The Relic Master, a work of historical fiction by Christopher Buckley featuring one of my favorite Northern Renaissance artists, Albrecht Dürer, and a plot to forge a relic for his patron – a relic known to us as the Shroud of Turin.

What have you been reading?

Have a suggestion for a poem, photograph, or future post?

Drop a note in the prompt box!

Don’t forget to follow me on:

Facebook – where I share news stories, articles from other blogs, and various and sundry miscellany that happens to catch my eye. It’s stuff you won’t see here! Well, mostly.

Instagram – where I show you my Life in Motion and share quotes and such. The widget only shows my last three photographs – don’t you want to see them all?

Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.

Tuesday, 15 December, 2015

06:00 Sunday Morning

Sunday: one of the few days I can sleep in.

So, why am I awake at 06:00?

1. Smokey won’t leave me alone until he’s fed.

It’s not like I can shut the door and drown his mewing out.

I’m sleeping in the living room because

2. I’m sick, and

Krystal has Candlelight performances until the 19th.

She cannot afford to get sick; those performances are her hours for the week.

3. The medication I’m on has worn off.

It’s not that I feel bad, but it helps me sleep.

Funny, the “daytime” medication makes me tired while the “nighttime” medication acts as a stimulant.

Go figure.

So, I’m awake.

Watching “Ancient Aliens” while I grade papers I should have graded yesterday.

Yeah, it’s that bad.

Sunday, 13 December, 2015

O Nerdmass Tree, O Nerdmass Tree

The Christmas season has officially begun.

While my season begins with Advent, I am the only observer in my immediate circle of family and friends, so family Christmas begins with Trimming the Tree.

Last night my wife and I sat down to a dinner of grilled cheese and tomato soup, put on the holiday classic How The Grinch Stole Christmas (both animated and live-action versions) and decorated the Christmas tree. Well, I got the tree out of the attic, aligned the pieces, checked the pre-strung lights, and let Krystal arrange everything else. She is so much better than I am at that sort of thing. I just kind of throw the ornaments around willy-nilly and let things land as they may. Apparently, that only works with tinsel – which we don’t use as it attracts unwanted attention from Smokey.

Over the years we’ve amassed a few ornaments; it’s become somewhat of a tradition to get three ornaments each year:

One ornament that reflects our interests.
One ornament from Starbucks.
One random ornament from Hallmark on clearance after the holidays.

This year, we realized just how nerdy our tree actually is: