Fifty Word Fiction

Please go look at my new blog, fifty word fiction, and submit something for publication to it. There will be a link to it in the sidebar later.

Picasso for Dummies

I'm doing a presentation on Friday for teacher professional development. I've said before that teachers make the worst audience. They already know everything that you're going to say and so feel no hesitance in speaking right over you. They're much worse than teenagers in that respect. A teacher's attention is harder to capture than that of a hormonal middle-schooler. Sad, huh?

A friend of mine made the proposal, and has some medical issues that keep her from participating, so she asked me to step in. I went to see her on Tuesday of last week, and thought that I got everything that I need, but, Whaddaya know? I really didn't. I spent most of today contacting various people to see if they have what I need, and they don't. Teaching an art unit without the main art print doesn't work all that well. I will have to adapt, well, something.

I checked a laptop out of our school library, plus a projector for the laptop, and the librarian gave me attitude because she didn't get all her crap done. It's really not her fault she didn't finish, because the electricity went out. (Not my fault either, but you really don't want to piss off the librarian when you're the art teacher. Or any teacher.) A transformer caught fire and screwed us all. The power went out for at least four hours on a teacher workday.

I'm not sure if I really want to do this thing. Thing is, I get stage fright in front of adults. I've been teaching for seven years now, but I still can't get up on the stage without freaking out. I teach classes, no problem, but there's something different about speaking to grown-ups. It probably helps that I've known most of my kids a long time. The fifth graders since they turned five.

For those of you at all interested, my workshop consists of a PowerPoint presentation, part of an animated video, some worksheets and a production activity. We'll watch some stuff, write some stuff, and make some art. For about four hours. Then the group switches with another after lunch, and I do it all again. I get paid a few hundred, plus continental breakfast and lunch. Not bad for a little over a day's work. Plus, who wouldn't love spending eight hours talking about Picasso, right?

Weird Searches

The most recent google searches used to find my site:

"use him for sex"
"which types of rice is eaten by morocco persons"
"sperm in his pants"

Only, I tried to use them to find me again, and they didn't work anymore. Guess I've been gone too long.

Here it is

I thought that the best thing to do would be to shut down my blog. I did, and started a new one elsewhere, only somewhat successfully. One of the people that I'd been avoiding followed me anyway.

So, here's the details.

I'm friends with some boys that I met in high school. I've lost touch with some of the others that used to be in the same group, and I've written about them in the past. There are one or two that I don't miss, and I wrote some things that I believe about them.

One of the boys that I don't communicate with read a bit about himself. He heard about the blog from a friend of a friend, and according to my stats read almost the whole thing in one night. Then he posted a very strange and enormously long comment defending himself and his actions in the past. And he posted a link to my blog from his website.

This freaked me out. Horribly. Maybe it shouldn't have, but I let it get to me. I started to think about all of the things that I'd written, and did I really want to leave it out there for anyone to read? (Okay, for people to know that it was me writing about them.)

I talked to Apathy Bear, and his advice will surprise no one who has ever read any of his comments or entries here. He said, "Fuck him." I just couldn't let it go, so I dismantled the blog and thought I might start another, sometime soon.

I missed writing and interacting with other bloggers, so that same weekend I started another blog. I didn't like it as much. So I'm back.

Please excuse the interruption in service, we appreciate your patience. Thank you for visiting Telling Deeds, come again.

. . . and I'm back

I'm back, with a new screen name. Details to follow.