Don’t like gruesome news? This week isn’t your week. Sorry. :(
Three stories that don’t pass the “breakfast test”: This week has been a bit of a roller coaster as far as downright sickening news goes. We feel that all this stuff has to be noted, but let’s be honest. This is not the kind of stuff that one expects to hear about back-to-back-to-back. Initially, we didn’t even mention the first story below because we felt it was too disturbing. But as the week has gone on and a trend of disturbing news has cropped up, we figured we had to get to get a mention in. For your sake, here’s what you need to know. Note: This story is tagged with “trigger warning” for folks who need that sort of thing.
- sunday In Miami, a guy was shot and killed after eating another man’s face in a brutal scene captured on camera. Some sites (Gawker) even posted photos of the victim. This story is weird even for hardened investigators.
- tuesday In Montreal, a manhunt began after body parts started getting mailed to various Canadian political parties. The murder was reportedly filmed; a porn star with an extremely bizarre online reputation is the lead suspect.
- thursday In Maryland, a Morgan State University student is accused of killing his housemate, then eating his heart and part of his brains The suspect had also been charged with assault in an incident less than two weeks ago.
(Photo by Luke Hayfield Photography; the original photoset has three parts)
WHAT IS GOING ON, WORLD?
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.
onabicyclefortwo asked: How was your weekend with ya lady friend in fine old Northeastern Ohio?
Lots of fun! I met a ton of people, but they were all really friendly. It was cool to see her in her natural environment.
ginger-snap-style asked: WHAT DID YOU THINK OF COLUMBUS AND ME AND MY FAMILY? HONESTY COUNTS, JEFFSTAH!
I HAD A REALLY GREAT TIME! YOUR FAMILY IS SUPER-WELCOMING AND I FELT RIGHT AT HOME. AND I REALLY ENJOYED GETTING TO HANG OUT WITH YOU, JOOLZ!
fwarg asked: do you like to pack or unpack better? what is your favorite candy bar?
If by “unpack”, you mean dump all my shit on the floor, then definitely the latter.
And you cannot do better than a classic Snickers.
This is unrelated, but that last beer at the Chili’s airport bar might have gotten me a little drunk. Just saying.
ASK ME THINGS.
thefacci asked: I totally forgot to post this when you asked but your recent ask/response reminded me: some of the best non-fiction I read in high school were various essays from the Orwell Reader. Yes, it's a little bit dated but Orwell (unsurprisingly) uses excellent prose and covers the material in a really engaging way. They're great examples of early(ish) non-fiction accounts for journalism purposes.
Another great suggestion! I’m definitely going to look into Orwell.
I guess I could give you dear readers a brief outline of what subjects I intend to discuss in class:
I won’t get into the nitty gritty of each of those, but they’re the working titles of each subject of class. I only have these students every other day, and the first ten weeks of class are more-or-less pre-packaged ACT prep stuff, so I don’t have all the time in the world to delve deeply into anything.
My basic goal for my students next year is to a) Get them thinking about these very broad humanities subjects that they will inevitably come across in college and b) teach them how to use the information they have to both form and defend an opinion.
Keep those suggestions coming, people!
will-jog-for-food asked: If you're still looking for a good non fiction author I highly recommend looking into Kafka's books. You'll find novels as well as short stories composed brillianlty. On top of that he is not the commonly known author for (american) high schoolers and I'm sure you'd give them something to think about for the rest of their journey. Good luck! :)
Thanks so much! I’m thinking that I’m going to stray away from novels, since seniors already have two other classes in which they’re continually reading full-length books. I’m looking more and more at short stories and articles as primary material, with a healthy dose of blogs, op-eds, videos, lecture segments, and so on as peripheral additions.
I’m going to teach a section on the ethics of civil service, and I think I’m going to delve into some of Bukowski’s stuff for that.
Per usual, I’m always up for suggestions on materials and whatnot.
I’ve never been so proud of anything in my entire life.
I think it has something to do with summer being right around the corner. I keep getting nostalgic about how I used to spend weeks at a time sleeping over at a buddy’s house, or driving around with an old friend until sunlight, just talking about whatever was on our minds. The time between school years was something we held sacred, squeezing everything we could out of our limited period together, making sure that we were around each other as much as possible.
Sometimes, it’d be nice to go back to that.
“The mask Joker is first seen wearing in The Dark Knight is modeled after the one Joker wears in his first episode of the 1966 series.” -superpunch2
I would make sweet and passionate love to Nolan for diving so deeply into Batman culture.
