Days One to Ten - Project 8 (Read the Bible) - Project Over

Wednesday, April 10th to Friday, April 19th

  This is late for a number of reasons.

  Most importantly, I didn't want to talk about reading the bible.

  I realized once I started it that I would have to actually write about it, and I thought I would have to say a whole bunch of things about this Bronze age religious tome that some people would agree with and some people would get mad at, and then I thought about the fact that a couple of my students have already found the blog, and that I've worked pretty hard to keep my spiritual leanings or lack thereof out of the teaching arena.  Seriously, try teaching the same group kids for two weeks straight - you will eventually have a variation of the following conversation:

  "Mr. Swinemer (your name may vary), what are you?"

  "Carbon-based.  Do you have question 3 done yet?"

  "No, I mean, do you go to church?"

  "How does answering that help with question three?  is it a word problem?"

  "I'm just interested."  "Yeah, me too."  "I also wish to know personal information about you, and am in no way simply helping my compatriots waste valuable mathematics time."

  "If I, or any other authority figure paid by the government started asking you this type of question, you would have grounds for some sort of legal action.  DOES ANYONE NEED HELP FROM AN ENGLISH TEACHER WITH THEIR MATH QUESTIONS?"

  "Mr. Swinemer, it's just we respect you sooooo much..."

  "Nice sucking up, by the way.  Believable."

  "Thanks, we have parents and practice.  Where were we....oh,  SOOOOOO MUCH...and if we knew what you thought, it might help us think about things in a new way."

  "Wow.  Genius.  I never realized the depth of a junior high student's desire to see a substitute teacher fired before.  Let's think for a second about what your parents-slash-guardians would say in response to your dinner banter - 'Mr. Swinemer actually worships Ra the Sun God and now we want to get mummified when we die.'  Please, do question 3 or leave the expletive-deleted classroom." 

  Clarification 1:  I do not worship Ra the Sun God.

  Clarification 2:  I do actually say the words expletive deleted.

    What finally got me off my tuchus to write about how staggeringly poorly I did on this project was the realization that my own spiritual/non-spiritual beliefs were not the project.  I have been developing in this area since I was a small child.  Long before I contemplated the One Thousand Days, I had fully come to understand myself and my place in the world.  That project is complete.  The friends and family who know me best know what I believe, and I suppose if I manage to write enough on this bjournal over the next 2.5 years, one who wasn't certain might be able to infer.  But I won't be sharing that part of me.  This is about growth in the material world - physical health, skills, and data.

  The Bible.

Go big, or go to...you get the idea.

  
  I chose the woefully inconvenient, giant-metal-clasped, 20 pound bible published in 1888 c.e. for English speaking Roman Catholics to use on the pulpit.  Although I'm pretty sure they still disagreed with Martin Luther on everything else.  I know, because there are AWESOME passive aggressive snipes at him throughout the footnotes - one describes his actions in translating the bible as "Impudent".  I don't like religious intolerance, but passive aggressiveness when one has obviously come around on that main argument is fantastic - NIL DESPERANDUM.

  The downside of using this LITERALLY WEIGHTY TOME, was portability.  I was reading it at home or not at all.  The upside was, well...my grandfather, (who was Anglican at the time, and I confess I've forgotten why they had it down at the cottage) gave it to me.  And he was truly awesome.  I was around him and I felt...awe.

  So I read Genesis, and half of Exodus.

  I guess this is another literal situation - an EPIC failure.  I had headaches throughout the week (perhaps someone will see this as impious or prideful, and decree the headaches divine retribution, or that my own personal Babylonian-Assyrian demon, Ashakku, the Demon who Attacks the Head - a headache demon, I know right? RAD - was after me again), and the fact is.....

  I found a lot of stuff kind of sad.  I have never liked the story of Abraham and Isaac.  I have disliked it since I was a little boy.

  I wished that more was made of the eventual reconciliation of Jacob and Esau.  I thought that was really nice.

  I wished that Cecil B Demille's idea (that Moses took his adopted mother with him and protected her during the night that the angel of death came to Egypt, because LOVE IS LOVE) was in the original story.

  I wished that I hadn't allowed the 6 page description of the specifications for the Ark of the Covenant to completely defeat me in the end.  Although I owe an apology to Doctors Henry "Indiana Jones, Junior and Marcus Brody for thinking that all their talk about the Ark was made up nonsense - any props creator for a movie is going to be able to do a really bang-up job just by reading Exodus as the guide.

  I attempted it.  I failed.  It's okay.

  The scarf I'm knitting is over two feet long at this point, so I'm still a little bit better than once I was, in my own estimation.

-Mike 

p.s.  Joseph Richardson died in 2005, at the age of 87.  Grampy Joe was my hero, and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't miss talking to him, learning from him, or sharing what I learned with him.  I don't think he would have gotten the point of this - in my mind, he could already do everything.  But I think he did feel that an old dog could learn new tricks.

Day Ten - Project 7 (Complete)

  This one felt a little more like a bit of personal growth, all things considered.  I know I won't ever hoist my car's engine out and repair it all by my lonesome, but the number of things I can do has increased.  I know a lot more about my car, and the fact that this project was weakly defined as Learn all the Parts of my Car, I'm gonna go ahead and claim the wi...stalemate.  I don't know all of it, but I do know where the fluids that I couldn't identify before go, I recognize different types of fuses, and I am never going to pay for oil changes or filters again.

  I'm ready for another reading project.  As I am obviously behind and wanting to catch up to where I am writing daily updates within a day or so of the project dates, the following project will be a ten day in one recap.  This will also allow people to gloss over it without getting offended.

  'Cause I'm gonna try to read the Bible.

-Mike

Day Eight and Nine - Project 7

Monday, April 8

  I went to get my oil changed.  At the local chain place.  I mention this because this feels like a partial defeat.  I also had them change the engine air filter.  I ended paying about 70 bucks for these two things that I am certain with some time and a little capital and luck I should have been able to do myself.  When the guy at the  oil change place offered to change my cabin air filter and that the price all in for the day would jump to 160-something, I snapped.  Not at him.  More of something in my brain.  I thanked them, promised myself that by the next oil change required, I would have everything ready to do it myself, and drove to a store and bought a cabin air filter for my car for about 25 bucks all in, and put the damn thing in myself.  ARRRRGH.  should have done it for the engine one too.  Man.  Jeez.

  All in all though, more than a decade ago, I would go to the dealer to get new windshield wipers "installed", so these baby steps are all minor victories in the war against my own defiant incompetence.

-Mike

Day Seven - Project 7

Saturday, April 6

  Spent the day at my parents.  Magda played with her cousin, and I spent a lot of it with my dad.

  First of all, my dad is a lot smarter than I am.  More importantly, he's a lot harder working than I am.  There's a line from Yes, Minister or Yes, Prime Minister (can't remember which) where Sir Humphrey is talking to this idiot old-boy establishment buffoon banker, and the banking idiot explains that some "decent chaps" broke the first rule of "The City":

  If you're stupid, you have to be honest, and if you're crooked, you have to be clever.

  I quoted that in a toast for my dad's 60th, and explained that he proved you could be honest and clever.

  I like my dad, is what I'm saying.

  That said, I disagreed with him today.  I told him all about the project, that I was trying to learn more about my car, so that I could do the little things like change my oil, the filters, things like that, and did he know anyone with little ramps to jack up the wheels so I could do things like this?  My dad said he didn't think so, and that I was welcome to do my oil changes at their place (because despite my folk's country mouse leanings, my house in town has the uneven gravel drive, whereas their "Cottage" has a nice, flat, giant, paved driveway), but that he felt that it didn't really make sense in this day and age to try to learn basic auto repair.  When I asked why, he told me it was because of all the computer diagnostic systems required with almost every modern car.  I don't think I mentioned the OBD-II thing that I totally want.  I was surprised at his reaction.  My dad's a successful businessman that probably could have quit jet-setting at any time and become a successful carpenter in an instant.  I'm saying he's good at a lot of stuff.  He taught me chess when I was five, and I didn't beat him till I was twenty-five....

  And it was in this sort of self-involved reverie when it hit me.  The real reason he was a little discouraging.

  I am a long term screw-up.  He was trying to protect me from doing something like taking my car apart and not knowing how to put it back together.  He's had to watch out for me for a long time.  He knows me.

  I went out to my car after getting home, with a few websites' worth of advice and a little flashlight, and found that OBD-II data link connector under my steering column.

  I think I'll get better at this for my dad.  Not to spite him.

  But maybe I can get him to worry about me less if I can do stuff like this.

-Mike

Day Six - Project 7

Friday, April 5th

  School week is done.  Kids are getting psyched for the inter school chess tournament, and I'm even more excited about our prospects than they are (and the little egomaniacs ARE EXCITED).

  So, as per my notes to myself making promises, Magda and I went to the library.  After school.  And after the bottle return depot drop off (Three dollars!  Oh the action figures I could have bought with that on trips over the border to Maine in 1981!  One, I suppose).  And after the grocery store on a Friday afternoon.  Upon entering the library, the librarians responded with flicking the lights on and off to signal that we had about 10 minutes left.  Magda, being three and a half and worried that rules set down by not parents have fearful consequences, began making my speed-needing mission noticeably less efficient by freaking out that the doors would lock and we would be "TRAPPED IN THE LIBRARY!"  I actually think she just hates any trip to the library with Daddy because she is forced to come with me while I find books for not her.  If she thought about being trapped in the library without DADDY, she'd probably say, "Do I have to sign up in advance for that, and is there some sort of fee?"

  Short story long, I got a couple of books on car maintenance.  And one on knitting techniques.

  I got one called Teach Yourself Visually:  Car Care & Maintenance,  and the other The Women's Fix-It Car Care Book:  Secrets Women Should Know About Their Cars.  My branch didn't have many books, so I happily grabbed what they had.  Yes, I got the Women's car book.  I assumed that the people who wrote it (even though the mechanic co-author was a woman) would be subtly patronizing and talk down to their reader a little bit.  And while I don't think that kind of thing is right for a female audience, I DO think that talking to ME like I am ignorant is the right way to go.  The Visually one has been more helpful to me so far.  I liked that they told me what a CAR is.  My need for origin story, absolute basics, was satisfied.  And it was in this book that I learned about personal OBD-II devices, and that for your car, DLC doesn't mean add-ons to my XBOX 360 games, but "Data Link Connector".

  It's so cool that you can hook a computer diagnostic system up to your car by yourself.  I want one.  I want to sell my action figures to get one (Well, some of them).  The book said my car's manual would say where the DLC is in my car.

  90 Minute Update:

  It's not in my Manual.

  I'm going to bed.

  -Mike

Day Five - Project 7

Thursday, April 4th

  This day was what my students, in their fits of hyperbolic expression, would classify as an "Epic Fail".  That is to say, not really epic in the sense of glorious battle and adventure in poetic verse, but a simple inability to achieve a basic goal.  I did not really work on my project today.  Sometimes, at the end of a day, when work is done, and I've gotten as much time in with my kid as the workday will allow, and I've done my exercise bike work, and I look at the clock and realize that it's about 9 pm, I question the need to pore over the websites or library books or yarn of my current project and say, "Sleep is for the weak and I am weak so give me sleep please cuz it's for me."

  I promise to go to the library tomorrow and get books about cars and how one fixes them.

  -Mike

Day Four - Project 7

Wednesday, April 3rd

  Weather has not been lovely of late, prompting my lazy self-comfort-preservation.  In response to encouraging comments, yes, I do absolutely want to start changing my own oil.  It seems like one of those things everyone should be able to do, which makes me think I'll somehow blow my car up.  Ugh.  Ended the sentence with a preposition.  Hate that.

  Watched a video about home oil change.  People appear to have nice, flat, paved driveways, or really awesome, tool-stuffed garages in the world of people who got the acts together at the right age.  Also, apparently, I will need to have some kind of collection equipment with which to collect the oil drained from my car.  Oooh, my popcorn bowl is suddenly not good enough for vehicular by-products.  And I admit, pouring the used motor oil down the toilet is probably not the earth-friendly option.

  I don't know if I'll have the time to do an oil change myself in the course of this project, but I've kinda got a fire lit under me about it now.  The fire of I-want-to-save-myself-a-few-bucks.  Gotta look into how much it would cost to get some of those mini-one-wheel-size ramps.  I know I really don't need them, and can't really afford them anyway, but I also know that if I can't take a few hours staring at the parts of the car involved, I'm gonna make a mistake.  And I've kind of freaked myself out with a minor comment in one of the things I read that said that used motor oil is a carcinogen.  I'm picturing working away, and a little drop falls on my finger, and boom, 3 days later, I die of finger cancer.

  Maybe laziness isn't really the issue.  Maybe it's Pre-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder.  You know, cowardice.

-Mike

Day Three - Project 7

Tuesday, April 2


Hey, have you ever looked at the layout or plan of doing something, and said, "This is a terrible plan. If I had a lick of sense, I would replan."


Changed my tire today. On my uneven, angled, gravel driveway.


Oh, there's this great scene in 28 Days Later (they're all great) where Frank decides to drive his cab through a tunnel in Infected (read - fast zombie) - filled London, and our hero Jim cautions, "No, no. No, see this is a really shit idea. You know why? Because it's really obviously a shit idea."


Moments later, they're CHANGING A TIRE while the infected are running into the tunnel.


Hunh. Synchronicity.


Car lurched over twice and overcame its jack. I sat and watched, and started doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.


Third time was the charm. And I live to tell the tale of my stupidity.


Definitely learning. *


-Mike













* And uninfected.

Day Two - Project 7

  Monday, April 1st

  Wouldn't it make more sense to prank people the OTHER 364 DAYS and be totally truthful on this day? People would totally not get it.

  I did the same thing with this project that Twain, running, and most of the others have allowed me to demonstrate about my character.  Attempt to go from zero to MASTAH in like a day or so.  I'm not going to fully comprehend internal combustion.  I'm a mechanical inept.  Also language, music, relationship.  Anytime I start to read about what something is, I start to get all three year old about its workings - "BUT WHY?"  And I continue in an infinite regression looking for root causes.  If I start reading about radar, I'll usually end up investigating Damascene steel weapons and then get sleepy and give up.

  I stopped trying to comprehend the theory of my engine for the meantime (dummy steps), and just went to get the handbook in my glove compartment for my car.  I spent a good half an hour trying to memorize the fluid reservoirs, dipstick locations, and fuse boxes of the vehicle without going out into the cold and dark.  Why explore the world?  My mommy and daddy get me a National Geographic subscription for Christmas every year.

  I found that there's a neat little info panel in the doorframe of my car with the required tire size and air pressure.  That's cool.  And since something poked a great big hole in my tire last Wednesday and I had to wait for the end of the Easter holiday to pick up my patched tire, I'll be learning how good the jack for my Kia Forte is tomorrow.  I should have put it on today, but it's COLD.  I'm including whatever time it takes as  time served on the project tomorrow.  Mary said I could, so it's cool, and I'm just itching to escape responsibility.

-Mike

Day one - Project 7 (Learn All the Parts of My Car)

Sunday, March 31

  I don't know anything about cars.  I know how to drive them, and that's it.  It's like the internet.  I know how to navigate it, search engines and all that.  But programming languages, the insides of computers.... You know what the last bit of computing I did that wasn't clicking on things with a mouse?

  10 PRINT "YOU SUCK"
  20 GOTO 10
  30 END

RUN

YOU SUCK
YOU SUCK
YOU SUCK
YOU SUCK
YOU SUCK

YOU SUCK
YOU SUCK
YOU SUCK
YOU SUCK
YOU SUCK

YOU SUCK
YOU SUCK
YOU SUCK
YOU SUCK
YOU SUCK

  You know what didn't suck?  My Commodore 64. *

  Anyway, that's me and cars.  I got a new car last year.  And by new I mean like new.  I like it.  It has a place where I can put my flash drive and hear things on the STEREO!  Everyone is tired of me explaining how very RAD this is.  But my last car was a mostly analogue 2003 Hyundai Accent where the radio conked out in the first year, and with no CBC and just a cd player to sustain me, I became a big fan of audiobooks not long after.

  I did learn to do a couple things with my old car.  I learned that I should have been ashamed of myself when I took the car to the dealer to get replacement windshield wiper blades installed.  So I figured out how to do that myself (this is not nothing - have you not read earlier posts, formed a pretty accurate portrait by now?).  Later, I realized that if I craned my head around, I could see where the headlight bulbs went.  Unfortunately, the housing for my Accent's battery had been rusted solid by ancient screws, so I had to take the whole front quarter of the grill off to have enough room to reach in and unplug/replace the bulb.  It was cold that day, and gloves were not aiding the process, so I felt pretty tough and manly by the end.  Hey, the headlight worked, and I saved a few bucks.

  So I've been reading about internal combustion engines.  I think it has something to do with that James Watt fellow and this whole Industrial Revolution the kids today are so hung up on.  I'm having a Love's Labour's Lost sort of time with comprehending the basics.  Truth to tell, combustion kind of breaks my brain.  I don't think I fully comprehend fire.  I mean I can use it sure, search engines and all that, but...

  I'll get back to you.

-Mike

* Okay, it sucked a little.  But suck-sight is 20/20.  oh, and the Vic 20 totally did suck.

Day Ten - Project 6 (Project Complete)

    Was looking for Mary and Magda outside the grocery store and its connecting strip mall.  So I jogged back and forth.  YEAH!  LETTER OF THE LAW ALL THE WAY, BABY!

  Total cop-out.  

  In other news, I knit, like, every day now.  I'm making a giant, Saint's Row purple gang colour scarf for myself.  Mary has completely surpassed me in creativity and skill with the knitting possibly out of spite (either with me or knitting itself), but I'm still happy with where I am, skillwise.

  So, I'm not a runner.  I might try to find a day or two in the week to do it occasionally, as it does seem to give me more of a full body exercise compared to my bike (which I do for the diabetes), and even with the less than 50% success rate, I found my endurance did improve a bit, which I need if I'm going to tackle any sport in the near future.

  I've decided on "Learn how my car works" as my next project.  Tomorrow, I'll be starting to look at just what the heck an internal combustion engine is.  Trust me, I think I understand how Zefram Cochrane's warp drive works better, so this won't be easy.

-Mike

Day Nine - Project 6

PARTY.  HAPPY.  NO RUNNING.  HAPPY.  NO GUILT.  TOO HAPPY.

-Mike

  

Day Eight - Project 6

  So, I've done really cold, really rainy, and now, really freaking big headache.  That felt like a victory.  Plus, I've been dropping the number of walking steps in my walking intervals, and adding steps in my running ones.   Still haven't done my bike cardio.

  Also, this project overlaps with my gang's annual board game night.  It's kind of everything that's wrong with me and the reasoning for the projects, but I started it nine years ago, and my friends all still humour me, so I am so excited I can hardly breathe.  No, I'm just out of breath from running.

  Right foot is starting to get a little sore from my old hand me down sneakers, courtesy of the successful baby brother.  Can't really afford new ones, so c'est le guerre.  Anyway, I've got lots of pre-Easter chores on Friday morning, and all day Saturday, so I'm betting I'll rationalize away any last chance of making this a successful project.  To thine own self be true, right?

  Mine own self seems to be trying to sabotage me lately.

-Mike

Day Seven - Project 6

Did a little better tonight.  I was all "Here I Go Again (On My Own)" by Whitesnake, and within about twenty minutes, I was "King of Pain" by The Police.  You know, the part where you're in the pouring rain.  But. I didn't quit.  Mostly because I am so completely sucking in this project already.  Didn't do my regular exercise bike workout afterward, either.  I am racking up the owed minutes on my exercise bike cardio.  And I can't jog earlier in the evening, because that's the time I have with my kid.

  And the early morning is just a stupid time of the day.  Not just for working out.  It's stupid for everything.  It's sometimes good for dragging oneself to bed after a late night.  Other than that, no.

  -Mike

Day Six - Project 6

  I finally got back on the mule.  I reduced my intended distance.  I thought I did anyway.  I just googled it and I only took a kilometre off the whole round trip compared to last time (now I'm scared again).

  I did stretch and warm up, and I also cooled down afterward.  There was one snag.

  A freight train was travelling in the same direction as me on my return leg.  This was not some POWERFUL LOCOMOTIVE, it was huffing and puffing its car-carrier-cars along at a nice slow clip.  I mean pleasant-speed-the-trainyard-bulls-won't-catch-us-Big-Rock-Candy-Mountain-Awaits-other-hobo-reference.  Nothing too fast.

  But you see, I like Superman.  The comic books, cartoons, movies.  Christopher Reeve was on my wall when I was little.  I jumped off low rooftops with a cape and a dream.  And I remember when he ran home from high school in the 70s Superman.  So, yeah, at the end of my run, I started to put on a little racing speed.  I don't know what I was expecting.  Of course I beat it.  It stops frequently.

  So I'm guessing I overdid it again.

  Tomorrow is going to SUUUUUUUCK.

  -Mike

Day Five - Project 6

  So, the suggestions on the sites I looked at say I should stretch and warm up outside, in the weather in which I'll be jogging.  And man, everything I've ever read says you have to cool down after a workout.  I hate that.  I want to just slam on the brakes and be done.  That's how I roll.  By not rolling.  Just shifting into PARK and the engine be damned.  Hmmmm.  I think my analogy is teaching me things.  All right then.

  Oh, also, they said don't try to start off with too much.  Apparently you can put a lot of strain on yourself.  Interesting.  Just do a short neighbourhood jog.  Huh.  I guess that makes sense...for wusses!

  (He says still feeling residual soreness three days later)

  All right.  I have the information.  I have a battle plan.  I am ready to go.

  (Few Hours Later)

  I didn't go.  It turns out, I'm a-scared.  I have this horrible feeling that everytime I try this, I'm going to hurt myself more and more, and then die.  And I can't die yet.  I should have more of a story arc than that.  Maybe when I've only got one more project to do - for the "Oh, how sad" factor.  Or, maybe when I'm a month from retirement, and than the maverick rookie student teacher I've been training has to go on a mad spree of revenge!  "Old Schooling", starring someone I like from a while ago, and introducing someone I've never heard of, in the summer blockbuster of the...summer.

  I will run tomorrow, okay.  I promise.

-Mike

Day Four - Project 6

 Oh, COME ON!  I hurt more today than yesterday!  This is a rip!  This is why we fat people stay fat.  Mary said I really need to talk to someone who knows how to run, or look at a running clinic's website, or do some kind, any kind, of preparation.  Yeah, right.  That makes sense.  There's probably some kind of drug on the market that makes this stuff easy for atrophied slobs.  They should give me some of it.  Free.  Because I deserve it.

  Okay.  I'll get some running tips.

-Mike

P.S.  Ow.

Day Three - Project six

  Ow.  Ow ow ow.  Groan.  Hiss.

  I am prematurely old.  This is a condition which I have caused in myself.  I know this.  What I don't seem to know is that I can't just up and start new physical activities without paying for them the next day.  "But I did things just like I did when I was 18, and I could do it then."  Boo, idiot.

  Too much pain.  Can't run.  Weak.  Feeble.

  -Mike

Day Two(!) - Project 6

  Ok, so as it turns out, in knitting parlance, I dropped a stitch.  In real terms, the Shakespeare project and the trip to visit family and freaking Love's Labour's Lost means I miscounted.

  To tell the truth, I can't believe it took five projects for me to screw up the count.  I'm going to have to do a double run sometime during the next nine....eight days.

  It's Friday night, I jogged for close to an hour, then did my exercise bike cardio for over an hour.  I have decided to not feel guilty, and to drive a variety of cars off a variety of bridges in Grand Theft Auto.  I will write something cute and heartfelt and witty and insightful tomorrow.

-Mike

Day One(?) - Project 6 (Start jogging outside)

  I really needed a break from all the big think.

  I put this one on the list because for a number of reasons.  One is that it is a really good introductory Physical Challenge project.  It might help me with endurance, with the eventual sports, and possibly help me become a faster runner.  The second reason it that it is cheap.  I can run on a treadmill all day long (or an hour), but treadmills are expensive.  So are the gyms that frequently house them.  The outside world is somewhat free if you simply want to walk on it.

  Lastly, that fact about running on a treadmill is absolutely true.  No matter how out of shape I am, I can jog on a treadmill for a LONG TIME.  I don't know why.  This will seem unimpressive to the rest of you, but for me, it is very strange.  When I am outside, jogging at a pace slower than I would use on a treadmill, my lungs  start to burn.  It only takes a few minutes.  My lungs don't do that in a nice, air-conditioned gym or on a friend's treadmill.  In summer it's bad enough, but it winter?  I really don't ever want to be in a life or death struggle in the cold.  Wolves that would never come near the smell of man would take a look at me and say, "Come on guys, this is the DEFINITION of weeding out the sick and old!  let's put the human out of its misery!"

  I'm sure someone knows why this is.  I never quite hit something useful with my searches on the internet.  I think I'll have to ask my doctor about it next time.  In the meantime, if it is not killing me, I have to try and beat it.

  I went for an easy jog tonight.  I did an interval run to the drugstore two kilometres away (2.2, actually, thankew, Google),  I don't have a pedometer, or in fact, a watch, so I simply counted every right footstep.  After a hundred, I switched to a walk, then after a hundred count again, back to jogging.  I went to the store, bought water and orange juice, stuck it in a backpack, and continued the same to home.  I even counted the steps in the store.  How obsessive is that, huh?  I'm going to look into jogging tips on the internet tomorrow, and then see if I should make it a little harder tomorrow, or go at the same level to see if I can do it with a little less hunka-hunka-burnin'-lung.  That's terrible imagery.

-Mike

Day Ten - Project 5 (Complete)

I finished Julius Caesar, and I am into Antony and Cleopatra, allowing me to continue to rip off HBO's casting to make the performance in my head more familiar and easier to comprehend.  I only read Othello, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, A Comedy of Errors, Love's Labour's Lost, and Julius Caesar completely, having just waded into Antony and Cleopatra.  I wasn't expecting Love's Labour's Lost to so completely defeat me.  I learned that Shakespeare's tragedies that don't have teenagers in them are absolutely awesome stories.  I also learned that if Shakespeare was here, right now, and he told me a joke, I would kick him in the codpiece and spit in his ruff.

  This project doesn't really end here.  Like knitting, which has become a daily relaxation, I'll be keeping up with the Shakespeare (though not to relax, just to feel a little smarter).  I'm almost caught up to Mary in her reading of Shakespeare's plays, so we can discuss them at length again (which, as I said before, is kinda fun).

  It's a nice thing to have now read enough of Shakespeare to feel confident enough to say I think some of his stuff is crap.  It actually increases my love of Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, Lear.

  I learned to never read, listen to, watch, or countenance in any fashion, Love's Labour's Lost.

  I hate that play.

  -Mike

Day Nine - Project 5

  Wednesday, March 20th

  Love's Labour's Lost is done.  I mean, I finished it.  Mary told me that it actually had a sequel, The Love's Labour's Strike Back, or some such.  But it has been lost to the ages.

  I would like to thank Weishaupt's Bavarian Illuminati, and paper-eating weevils.

  I started Julius Caesar.  I have been enjoying picturing the characters as the cast of HBO's Rome.  Ciaran Hinds and James Purefoy are awesome.  It's a nice change from picturing Love's Labour's Lost featuring the cast of....oh, something that sucks....Big Bang Theory.  Oh, no.  Too much.  I went too far and hurt my soul.

  Julius Caesar is as good as I remember it from 2nd year of university.  It was one of the few plays I actually read before withdrawing from Shakespeare 200 because I was failing.

  I like it, I like the characters.  I don't want to say anything more.  Brevity is the soul of wit.  Silence speaks consent.  Something else wise that justifies no more talking.

  Man, four nights to get through Love's Labour's Lost.  That's just embarrassing.

  -Mike

Day Eight - Project 5

Tuesday, March 19

  Friends, do you suffer from sleepless nights?  Does the constant tossing and turning from insomnia fill you with a desire for self-annihilation, for nothingness?  Do you, like the Bard said, wish to once again "Sleep, perchance to dream"?

  The cure is here!  Away with nights staring at your ceiling, finely crafting the insult you should have used on your seventh grade bully a quarter century ago, had you not been busy bleeding on the playground!

  Love's Labour's Lost is the answer!  In just three nights of attempting to read this.....classic(!)(?)(+/-)... you'll be able to sleep!  In fact, you'll be UNABLE to NOT SLEEP!  Your conscious mind will rebel at the thought of entering the play's fantastical precincts, and you will fall into sweet, protective unconsciousness, maybe even with a 10 lb Shakespeare tome falling heavily onto your snoring nose.  It's just that simple!

  Love's Labour's Lost may not be right for everyone.  If you suffer from Type II Diabetes, Sleep Apnea, Restless Leg, Headaches, Stuffed Up Nose, Delusions That EVERY Shakespeare Play Is Great Literature, if you are pregnant, are hoping to become pregnant, or hoping to engage in activity that might make someone pregnant, Love's Labour's Lost might have serious (no, not light-hearted or comical) side-effects.  Talk to your doctor to see if Love's Labour's Lost might be right for you.  And talk to your librarian about a book that might be more enjoyable.

  Love's Labour's Lost should not be used while operating heavy machinery.  It should not be combined with other prescriptions for this condition.  Combining Love's Labour's Lost with The Illiad may cause coma or even be fatal.

  Isn't it time you bored yourself to sleep?

  Isn't it time....for Love's Labour's Lost?

-Mike

Day Seven - Project 5

Monday, March 18

  Read another couple of pages of this....misdemeanor against humanity.  If you ever get a time machine, do like I said, go back and give it to Mark Twain.  DO NOT GO TO AN ELIZABETHAN ERA PARTY.  It would be like first-semester political science students, and hipsters, and drunken hockey parents, and panda bears, all together.  "Dangerous Thing" levels of little knowledge, mixed with toxic amounts of self-amusement, mixed with unbelievable degrees of indulgence and over-indulgence, mixed with pointless existence.

  Wow.  I hate a lot of things.

  One of them is Love's Labour's Lost.

  There is no end in sight of this.

   I memorized the following from Macbeth.  It may not be word for word, but I've noticed my memory starting to go in the last couple years, so I'm proud of it:

  Life's but a walking shadow;  it is a poor player
  Who frets and struts his hour upon the stage
  And is heard no more;  It is a tale told by an idiot
  Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

  If Shakespeare hadn't also written those words, I would say that Love's Labour's Lost was proof of idiocy.

  -Mike

Day Six - Project 5

Sunday, March 17

  Back from our trip, late bjournal entries done.  And it is time to start Love's Labour's Lost.

  Half an hour later...

  Really?  The writer synonymous with our language?  This?

  Five more minutes...

  Mary practically said she hated this, but then said I'd probably like it.

  Does Mary hate me?

  I mean, I like puns more than the next 8 year old or really silly grampa, but puns on slang have a half-life of...borrow from Warhol, carry the 2.... Seven and a half minutes.

  Puns don't last well.  If I left one in the fridge, it'd last a few months, then go stale, or rotten.

  The PLOT/PREMISE/EXCUSE FOR THIS PILE OF FANCY WRITING:

  A ruffed, He-man-Woman-hater's Club?  With books?  A book club.

  Remember the end of Bambi?  Bambi, Thumpy, and Stinky, or whatever, who the hell watches Bambi anymore, anyway?  The end, where the three boy animals are schooled in bein' "Twitterpated" (okay, I guess I remember a bit), and then each one sees a pretty girl of the appropriate species and takes off, leaving their friendship and promises of staying guy-pals forever and ever in the dust.  That's this freaking play.

  I hate this play.

  This play is dumb.

  I have only read a little bit.

  But it is stupid.  Big Stupid.

  Magnum Stupus.

  And I have to keep reading.

  -Mike

Day Five - Project 5

  I don't hate farce.  I like Trey Parker and Matt Stone's That's My Bush, precisely for the farcical situations and premises.  I love Moliere, specifically A Doctor in Spite of Himself.  But A Comedy of Errors has the most ridiculously flimsy pretense of a premise, and then ignores the fact that at least three of the main characters are in the know about what could be the cause of all the mistaken identities.  If you are going to have the crazy misunderstandings, and the sudden starting/stopping of pointless, mindless violence, maybe you shouldn't have the ridiculously slow Shakespearean style dialogue.  I mean, this above all, to thine own self be true and all that crap, but DUDE.  Get thee to a freaking clue.  Moliere - zing zing ZING - fast dialogue.

  This one does have the first appearance of "Butterface/But her face" in popular culture - 400 plus years before someone in America (I'm assuming) felt they hand-crafted some really clever sexist invective.  I don't think that really qualifies as a plus.

  I might have laughed more if it had been titled "A Tragedy of Errors".  Then the rare attempts at humour might have been surprising, at least.

Mary's already complained about Love's Labour's Lost.  I'm going to start it tomorrow when we get home from our trip, but if you want to see something better and more summatively descriptive, please look at her comic version.

http://shakespearethisyear.blogspot.ca/2013/03/day-70-what-i-learned-loves-labours.html

-Mike

Day Four - Project 5

  Amongst the time spent with family, I was able to finish King Lear.  To start:  a HUGE FREAKING PLAY.  As far as Shakespeare goes, this one has more believable human motivation and decision making.  Most of Edgar's decisions (The brother set up for a crime he didn't commit) - playing the madman even after he'd in all likelihood be safe and/or exonerated - seem ridiculous, but nearly everyone else, I get.  You kind of get the feeling that everyone is in the right and everyone is in the wrong (except for Cordelia and Kent).

  The dialogue is some of the most enjoyable I've seen yet.  Kent insults the steward Oswald in what is without a doubt one of the top ten put-downs of all time (sound now, alarums for I will spoil thee):


"A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats, a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, action-taking, whoreson glass-gazing, superserviceable, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch, one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition." Kent does beat him into clamorous whining, case you were worrying.


  I can see Samuel Jackson running through any or all of it with a few judicious M%$#&$@!*%amp;S thrown in, for good measure (for measure).

  I've been trying to memorize a line from many of the plays of Shakespeare I've read this year, and that one, while awesome, is not my favourite from Lear.   Edmund's "Now, gods, stand up for bastards!" goes into my list alongside Murderer #1 from Macbeth telling the king he's got the stomach for dirty work, and despite my hate of it overall, Merchant of Venice's excellent description of learning vengeance and violence from the hypocritical Christians stated by Shylock.

  I'm not optimistic about a Comedy of Errors. If he had to tell us it is a comedy in the title, Methinks the laddie doth propound too much. I'll read it and get back to you.


-Mike

Day Three - Project 5

  Hi folks.  Grand-mere passed away today at the age of 103.  I mentioned her briefly a few posts back.  She was awesome.

  We're gonna be out of town for a few days.  I know this is coming right on my just posting my delinquent posts, but I'll update on Lear et al as soon as I can.  Family trumps fun projects.  I've got my 10 lb Shakespeare with me, so I'll read when I can.

  Tell the people you love that you love them.  All the time.

- Mike

Day Two - Project 5

  Oh, Man.  I mean, I know I read Romeo and Juliet twenty-one years ago, so I should have just skimmed it, but DAMMMMMMMMMMMMMN....

  When I was 16 in grade 11, and had a teacher who was then a mentor and hero and friend and would become many years later a beloved colleague, I had to study this exercise in everything wrong with teenagers.  At the age of 16 I decided these two idiots were idiots.  Now, years past my peer-group misanthropy, I am a teacher of teenagers.  And NO, I do not think they're idiots.  I have more respect and understanding for teenagers now than when I was one.  But they do lack a sense of scale.

  In their defense, they haven't had the years to gain a sense of proportion, objectivity, self-awareness.  I remember what it was like, feeling that life would always be like THIS, feelings would always be THIS WAY, and whomever one was dating at the time was THE ONE TRUE LOVE OF THIS OR ANY ERA.  But what adults forget is that WE didn't just learn from our elders' experiences.  We learned from our own.

  Juliet and Romeo, however, didn't learn from anything.  These idiots WERE, ARE, and E'ER SHALL BE, idiots.  You really want to yell at the book.  Or go to a 17th century performance and yell from the penny-admission standing-room-only rows and yell.

  "Jeez, dude, wait a few weeks!  You just fell out of love with the last one an hour ago!"

  "Hell, girl, you're thirteen!  He's older than you by a few years!  Oh, and his family HATES you!  He might be trying to trick you to humiliate you!  Just cuz the internet and camera phones don't exist yet doesn't mean guys can't try to mess with your reputation!"

 
"If you love him, and have married him, banishment or no, GO WITH HIM!  He's RIGHT THERE!  If you're scared to leave home, MAYBE YOU'RE TOO DAMNED YOUNG TO GET MARRIED!"

  "Don't kill yourself!"

  "Don't kill yourself, either!"

 "IDIOTS!"

  I don't like Romeo and Juliet much.  I like the Friar, who's a little less idiotic than the rest.  And I like Benvolio and Mercutio.  I like the concept of Ruffed Toughs.  Oh, yeah, gonna bite my thumb at y'all, knowumsayin?

  Okay.  Taking a breather.

  On to King Lear.

 -Mike

  Dedicated to Jim Campbell.  The English teacher I'm trying to grow up to be.

 

Day One - Project 5 (Ten Shakespeare Plays in Ten Days)

  Days late.  Again.  I never said I would post every day (or make a post for each day), but it has become the mode for the bjournal, or at least the exception that tests the rule.  Rule fails.

  I chose this project for a number of reasons.  The first is the same reason that all the "Read the works of [FamousDeadLiteraryFigureHere]" are attempted.  It's Edmund Hillary's "Because it's there."  The IT is not the works of said notables.  The IT in question is the glaring gaping hole in my reading as a supposed English Language Arts teacher.  I'm good at grammar, and I owned a lot of classics of literature as a pretentious teenager.  I haven't actually read that much.  When I talk to real well-read personages (see reason 2), a cold wind blows through the part of my brain inhabited by my IT.  Reading some more Shakespeare is probably not a bad thing for me.

  The second reason is I fell behind in reading Shakespeare a month ago.  My partner has a blog (one of many) describing her attempt to read all of Shakespeare's plays in a year.  I've mentioned this before.  And when she started it in the new year, I figured (given my IT of previous reason) sure, why not, I've got no other demands on my time.  One Shakespeare play a week - it seemed doable.  I read (as previously bjournaled) The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Winter's Tale, Macbeth, and Racists Merchant of Venice.  Yeah, Merchant of Venice did my head in.  I just couldn't deal with the constant hatefulness of it.  It's kind of funny that What I started focusing on in my project at the time was Mark Twain's books, and specifically Huckleberry Finn.  But I do believe there was more social commentary in Twain's usage of the "N" word than Shakespeare's stage direction "Exit Jew" and the like.

  So I've read Othello.  Of my spoils, I do anow alert thee.  It's got racism, it's got sad unfairness, it's got violence against women.  But it's got heart.  It's got strong emotional believability.  O man, it's got Iago.  I still love my man Oberon (Midsummer Night's Dream), the selfish, debonair, thoughtless villian unleashing chaos (Puck) on the world because he didn't get his way, but Oberon lives in a romantic comedy world.  Iago lives in Venice - not the stupid, I-need-you-to-get-me-money-so-I-can-pick-a-box-and-try-to-reality-show-win-the-rich-lady-of-Belmont Venice, but a darker, harsher Venice under threat of war.  Iago is like hate for hate's sake.  When he kneels down with Othello to swear an oath to help him, I shivered.  Back when my hometown of Halifax, NS (I love how I still write as if the people who read this aren't almost entirely my family) had an artsy, indy movie theatre, I saw Othello, starring Lawrence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh.  I remember thinking it was awesome.  I have loved Lawrence Fishburne in everything he's done.  Even if the movie sucked, he didn't.  I watched The Matrix Strikes Back and Return of the Matrix for him, no one else.  Come on, Mr. Clean!  Apocalypse Now, when he was "Larry" Fishburne!  Okay, my revels now are ended.

  Othello is good.  It is sad.  Read it.

  For those of you interested in my Shakespearean itinerary, it is actually at the whim of my good lady partner.  Mary decided on the order of the plays for her yearlong task.  This project is a chance for me to get back in her game.


1. Othello
2. Romeo and Juliet
3. King Lear
4. The Comedy of Errors
5. Love's Labour's Lost
6. Julius Caesar
7. Antony and Cleopatra
8. Coriolanus
9. Titus Andronicus
10. The Two Gentlemen of Verona

  It was fun, before I got sidetracked, discussing each play as we read them.  I have taken the advice of friends, coworkers, distant relatives, students, and strangers who heard me talking about the projects.  Mary had asked if I wanted to read the plays with her before I got the idea for my One Thousand Days.  It was fun, and it was nice to feel like I had this format for bettering myself.

  And that's how I started thinking about my own thing.  So this project, hot on the heels of another reading project (well, one heels back), is just cuz.  Just cuz I like talking to Mary about this stuff.

  I love you, Mary.

-Mike

http://shakespearethisyear.blogspot.ca/

Day 10 - Project 4 (Complete)

  Mary, who loathes knitting now, was the one who taught me how to bind off.  I watched a video from http://www.knittinghelp.com and the woman demonstrated it exactly how Mary showed me.  I took the loose end of yarn once it was cut and fed it into the last loop, and it seems pretty tight, but it's not like I sewed it in with some kind of knitting-sewing-needle thing, which they have and I'd never heard of, because I spent ten days learning the absolute basics.

  I learned I like knitting.  It's not as awesome as reading Mark Twain, sure, but it's heaps better then making my back and legs sore with tons of stretching.  One Christmas in recent memory, I baked homemade bread for everyone.  This was awesome because (a) there are still people who like getting homemade stuff, and (b) I'm so poor I can't really afford Christmas.  So win-win.  I might try to make a few scarves this year, in and around all the other things that need doing.  But if I start now, I might be able to make a handful without having it take over my life.

  Here is the incredibly lopsided thing that my kid was bouncing off the walls in anticipation of giving to her stuffed animal:

Is it just me, or does it sort of look like a cape? 

  Well, it is wool, so technically, if her toy lamb wears it, it makes Lambie marginally more real, right?  Dad for the WIN!

  Magda is asking for knitted police uniforms and other costumes for her stuffed animals.  This could save me a fortune in presents if I get better at this.

  I've learned....to be cheap.

  -Mike

Day Nine - Project 4

  We spent the day visiting Mary's mother, and her sister and sister's family.  I spent the time we were chatting knitting, especially when visiting her Mom.  I like how supportive she is - professing to be very impressed that I can barely do more than a knit stitch.  Heck, Mary's aunt and grandmother (Grand-Mere is 103) were blown away when they saw me change a diaper three years ago - My kid's, not mine.  I think the assumption of men being unwilling or unable to do these things raised me a little in their estimation, like a monkey that can wear a fez while riding a tricycle.  But these are women I respect, and I will take any estimation I can get.

  I have officially told my little girl that the super dishrag is definitely going to be a blanket for "Lambie", so I can't take it back now.  Magda sleeps from 7 pm to 7 am without fussing, I ought to be paying hourly wages and contributing to a pension plan for that sheep puppet.  A half-assed blanket is the least I can do.  Plus, Magda is psyched.

  Still haven't figured out binding off, Knitting's finishing move, and I'm so wiped from driving, I'm considering the hours of knitting while chatting with the in-laws my time served.

  Tomorrow is what I've learned.  (Can you guess?  It starts with "K")

-Mike  

Day Eight - Project 4

  I am writing this on Sunday and am also pretending it is Friday.

  I've gotten better at keeping my stitches loose but not too loose.  I've also hit 40 stitches on my needle (up from 20), so I really need to pay more attention to what I'm doing.  I probably can't chew gum while I do this either.  On the upside, it was the last day before the March Break, and most classes didn't have new work for the students to do, so when I was covering a colleague's class, I was able to knit once the students finished their work and played math games.  A little more knitting after school and my two hours were covered.  I'm going to play video games and unwind as if March Break is a good thing for a substitute.

-Mike

Day Seven - Project 4

  No help.  No growth.  No improvement.  Zero Sum Knitting.  Took the longest time tonight to knit one whole row after the purling fiasco of yesterday. It was like the yarn was back to school after summer break, and bragging about how it's completely forgot how to work, and how its mom totally doesn't care if it stays up all night playing video games and stuff.  Lost the thread there for a second.  Basically, I didn't get a moment to get some knitting help on my lunch break.  On the upside, we had a fun chess tournament at school.  So the totality of my knitting work tonight is one row.  One row that for whatever evil was woven into my bottomless scarf took me three or four times as long to do.  I hate purling.  It's stupid and has a stupid name and probably face if I took the time to personify it.

  There is a slim, possibly starving itself to be popular, chance that I just have not really figured out how to purl correctly.  I don't think you should believe that, and should simply get on board the purling is lame train I just built out of spare run-on sentences recently.  As a person who admires scientists, I have a wannabe obligation to examine all possibilities, even the highly laughably unlikelihood that I simply screwed up.  I'll double check my math and get back to you.

  Can't even locate the wire that plugs the camera into the computer.  Man, Zero Sum Knitting.

  Three more days to figure it AND binding off.  Wow, I just realized what I've really given myself is a hundred deadlines over which to stress and worry.

  -Mike

Day Six - Project 4

  Purling seems to be my next big hurdle.  I got knit stitches down so that I could knit while running my chess club. This is a purl stitch.  "Right, so you know the stitches that you were told to keep a little loose?  Well, all of a sudden they are going to tighten up like a stressed person's air passage, and even if you are using mono-molecular cyberpunk-era knitting needles , the needles will not get thorough the stitch without first going through the yarn a half dozen times so as to stretch and ruin each stitch in its inevitable turn."

  And I was doing so well.  

  A colleague offered to help me today, and if she has a break at the same time I do, I'm totally taking her up on it.  I might ask one of the seventh graders, who grabbed my needles and started knitting like a champ at the end of lunch.  I've got a chess tournament to run tomorrow, so that should be easy.

  I'm still knitting the same piece from yesterday, and I'll show some pictures tomorrow.  I'm thinking I'll do what everyone who doesn't know what they're making or how to end it does.  Giant Doctor Who scarf.

  -Mike

  

Day Five - Project 4

  Eu-Freakin-Reka!  So, to be clear, I am the most awesome Knittist that ever knat or will have ever knut.  You wanna see the knifty and knice work I have done?  Behold.

Oh, yeah.  I TOTALLY did that.

    Just for the record, to get a sense of the consciousness-obliterating amazingness that is my handiwork, here's my only ever selfie...selfy?  Selfee?  I'll ask one of my students, they care about the correct spelling of best-before-due-date-slang.  Whatever, here's the pic with a sense of the scale of my achievement:

Can you deal with THIS?  No, you can NOT.

   I think I actually achieved a couple moments of that zen level of medititation crap while knitting.  I was not ticked off, and I was actually enjoying myself.  Mary and I were listening to a William Gibson audiobook of essays and trying to knit.  Mary allowed me to photograph her expressing her feelings on the experience of knitting.

I need a portmanteau word for attractive and aggravated.

   Despite the fact that I have completely and for all time knocked the world of knitting on its ear, I think tomorrow I will try purling for the first time.  And if you think my potential dishrag .5 is astonishing, wait till you see it with knitting that looks like...whatever purling does that differentiates it from knit stitches.

  Good Knite!

  -Mike

Day Four - Project 4

  All right.  I can Cast On.  It doesn't look beautiful, but I can do it.  I can even start to knit stitch.  But I did it so tightly that I couldn't do a second row.  I have the pattern down, so I might have to practice and practice till just these first two steps don't tighten up like the arteries I feel closing in response to the stress that knitting is making me feel.  "Really, you can have my knitting needles when you pry them from my cold, dead hands. Seriously, I want you to take them.  Just wait for the rigor to settle down, and remember to check your blood pressure regularly when learning to knit."

  For my beloved three people who read this, my apologies for the lateness of my posting.  Despite the crazy amount of stuff to do this week, I'll be posting regularly again tomorrow.

  I have no jokes to finish my post.  Knitting has pierced my soul and I can no longer tell jokes.  Nothing is funny anymore.  There is only sadness and pain and yarn.

  -Mike

Day Three - Project 4

  Another day of rousing frustration and personal failure.  I watched a number of videos on the internet all showing me how to cast on, knit and purl, and reminding me that I'll come up with my own way of doing things.

  I have.  I use the wrong way.

Saw one bunch of Youtube videos with hip, cool people talking about all the hippest, coolest, knitting news and methods.  I swear, hipsters, man.  "Now when I knit, I like to get my yarn by taking apart old sweaters."    Oh, for love of criminy.  Now me, when I like to make a sandwich, I like to get my mustard and bologna and bread from sandwiches I just dismantled, so my refrigerator footprint is smaller.  GET A KNITTING APP FOR YOUR PHONE!  I'm hoping this nonsense is regular updates on all the places one can get cool retro yarn before it becomes cool and mainstream, and not just playing another stupid phone game, but a game where you knit.

  I have determined that the older and closer to death I get, the less afraid of the nothingness beyond I shall become, because of my increasing annoyance with and contempt for the generations immediately following me.  "Hey, great-grandpa, how are you feeling today?"  "O hell, boy, what are you wearing on your head?  Someone unplug these things."

  Knitting still seems utterly incomprehensible.  I can play video games where it requires a whole lot of combinations of movements and patterns of button pressing and character abilities.  But, knitting, man.  Maybe I'd get better at it if knitting gave me little achievements to unlock.  Or finish moves where a bad guy dies when I knit a stitch.

  Maybe I just suck at turning yarn into clothing.

  I was at a family party today, where multiple family members can knit, and one in fact was. I didn't even mention I was trying to learn.  I think this is the fastest I have ever developed a complex about something.  WHOOHOO!  New personal best!

  Sigh.

  I bet Mark Twain could knit.

 - Mike

Day Two - Project 4

Yeah, so.....

  I have done many, many things that have made me feel stupid, and inept, and ignorant in my 3.73 decades. Eleventh Grade Mathematics.  Guitar Hero on the hard setting.  Snowboarding.  Taxes.

  Knitting is without a doubt the hardest thing that I have ever tried to figure out.  Hands down.

  I watched the library dvd last night (Friday, March 1st).  It was like watching the "Church Lady" from SNL.  The needles I got are apparently not the kind  I should've been using, and my non-wool yarn from the dollar store means I'm a filthy communist who doesn't care about the hardworking shepherd and his/her disappearing way of life.

  I brought the Knitting for Dummies book with me to my daughter's gym/dance class this morning, and one of the dads who has heard about my projects suggested (a) learn to ride a motorcycle, and (b), upon hearing that I was trying to knit, that I should add swim the English Channel.  Knitting for Dummies talks about the wonders of knitting at work, at stoplights, I assume after the end of a particularly stressful round of boxing.  Then the book proceeds to explain your step by step actions on one page, and displays incomprehensible diagrams on the following.

  It was Mary's birthday.  I focused on that instead. I made burgers, and poutine, and a pretty blue and pink cake (I was aiming for green and orange, but I didn't have the right food colours).  It was a good day, and I think I won't feel guilty about my stressful project when the birthday seemed to turn out okay.

  I could totally swim the English Channel.

 -Mike

Day One - Project 4 - Learn to Knit

  I'm posting early, because Mary's birthday is tomorrow, and I'm moving the computer so she can enjoy kicking back and relaxing.  I'll report on my knitting progress in two days.  I've got dollar store yarn and cheap starter knitting needles, Knitting for Dummies, and a how to DVD from a woman who looks sufficiently...what's the feminine of avuncular...I swear, Mary told me once...oh, for....A woman who looks Auntological.

  I'll post pictures of my progress just as soon as anything remotely resembling progress is made.  Have a great weekend.  I want to say something clever about my transition from project 3 to for, something about the spinning of yarns and all that.  No, I got exactly nothing.

-Mike

Day Ten - Project 3 (Complete)

   Well, this project, as anticipated, did not come close to meeting the objective.  I guess the lesson learned in project 3 is do a little prep work before adding something enormous to the project list.

  But failure aside, the objective of the academic goals are to make me a more well-read person.  Mark Twain now climbs the charts of writers I love to rub elbows with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Neil Gaiman, Christopher Hitchens, Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Marshall Smith, and others.  This was the most enjoyable project yet.  I really don't want to spoil anything, so I didn't really do fair reviews of the books.  That said, I don't care, I was having too much fun reading Twain's stuff.  I'll be trying to keep scheduling time for more of his stuff when I'm supposed to be concentrating on new projects.

  I didn't finish Roughing It. I should clarify and say I haven't finished it yet.  Twain's time in Salt Lake City is really amazing.  One of the greatest writers of his age, he was walking around and observing and reporting on a new religion in its infancy.  I find myself wishing I had his first hand assessments of the birth of the "Big Three" monotheisms.  Mark Twain travels to England and meets Wells' time traveller, and incredibly well-penned hilarity ensues.

  I find myself getting a tad bit tangential, so to recap:

-  Due diligence in adding of projects to the list in order to attempt to do them justice
-  Perhaps some sort of alerting to spoils in order to do more comprehensive reviews and prove I read what I've said I read
-  Mark Twain is AWESOME.

  Oh, Heckfire and Tarnation, scratch the first one.  It's no fun to try easier projects.  I might as well get all vice presidential and shoot at birds from the back seat of a car.  It's no crime to try these things and fail.  It would be pointless to not keep trying.

-Mike

Day Nine - Project 3

  I should say something negative about Roughing It.  I should say it is long-winded or some such.  I should say he runs off on tangents, flights of fancy.  I should say something that doesn't sound like the ninth day in a row where I sing the praises of an author who doesn't need me to do it.  To demonstrate my keen critical analysis skills, my ability to spot the tiny flaws that no one else has seen.

  Nope.  So far, so awesome.

  I love the stuff about Slade, I love the stuff about Salt Lake City, I love the sleeping on mail bags.  This is my favourite travelogue.  Hands down.

  One thing I have assessed is my basic overland reading speed.  Given the size of the pages of my hefty tome of Mark Twain (containing all the ones I've read so far, and some short stories), I'm hitting an average of 25 pages an hour.  Even if the pages were normal paperback size, it wouldn't show me in some speedy-read-y light.  I estimate at this point I would need about 8 hours tomorrow to finish the last 200 pages.  If I called in sick from work, and I am actually still sick, runny eyes, sore neck, nausea, I think it's smallpox or the plague or witches or something suitably Twain-esque, I'd have to call in sick from being a dad too, and nuts to both.  It's one a.m. now, and I might try to get in a whopping ten more pages, yeah, do the easy math there, but yes, there is no last minute miracle, lazy guy suddenly develops the ability to speed read, Ode to Joy plays in my montage as pages fly in a Once Upon a Time in China leaf-whirlwind around me.  I'm gonna start project four the day after tomorrow, but I know I'm going to keep on reading Twain.  Oh, and I've still been stretching so I can still touch my toes.  And there's this thing, the Bjournal.  I might have to face the fact that there's a lot of these things that I will really enjoy, and may try to continue post-project.  This actually worries me now, because at present I only sleep about six hours a night when I'm lucky.

  If I'm successful, my easily addictable nature and my hatred of breaking a habit could mean that my projects are going to sort of kill me.  Who would have guessed that I missed taking things into account before I did this?

  Twain would've.

-Mike

Day Eight - Project 3

  A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is done.  Stone me, but it's a corking good read.  Again, I've done my utmost lo these past eight days to have no cause to sound alarum that spoils are nigh, and shall endeavour to keep faith.  Without betraying any of the story, I'd have to say that reading this in the time of its original publication would make it the equivalent of reading "Steam-Punk" literature today.  What is fascinating to me is the way Twain critiques the unpleasantness of everyday life in the Middle Ages in an frankly imaginary setting as the England of King Arthur.  It's as if he wanted to tell a great adventure story in a fantastic setting, but still let a modern day American viewpoint into it.  I hate that in those biblical cast of thousands movies I like so un-ironically.

  I love it in Twain's writing.

  In case the subtext of the last eight days isn't coming through, I love Mark Twain.

  Two days left, and I need to try start and finish Roughing It.  I'll skim any short essay or short story whenever I can in the next forty-eight hours, but I know I won't come anywhere near to targeted objective on this project.  I'm pretty sure that I don't care.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that I will have read everything Twain has ever written eventually.

  I'm actually pretty flu-ish tonight, and I don't think I'll be reading till 2 am, but I got in 5 hours of reading, so I don't feel like I wussed out.  I may not be the world's fastest reader, but I get there in the end.

-Mike

Day Seven - Project 3

  I laid me down last night, and did not read "The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg".  I got a little tired, and read a graphic novel about Jack Johnson, the boxer, instead.  So I'm a little behind.  That is to say, I'm a little further behind than the incredibly behind I already was.

  So I started A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.  I'm only about 50 pages in, and have another 150 to go, and Roughing It looks about twice as big as any of the previous Twain novels I've read, and I've got tutoring after school on the morrow and I haven't played Skyrim on my Xbox in like a week and this is why I never attempted to better myself before now.

  Nine hundred, seventy three days and counting.

  I read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, the kiddie illustrated version, and it REALLY didn't do the story justice.  The way the Yankee goes on about the people of his 6th century is so comically disdainful, there's only one modern hero who can really give a similar perspective:

  Ash,  Housewares.  "Don't touch that please, your primitive intellect...wouldn't understand alloys, and compositions...and things with molecular structures in the...what are you doing here anyway?"  Army of Darkness is obviously a take on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, with just enough shambling dead and demons added to make it more palatable to the modern moviegoer.  Both these guys are excellent examples of their eras, and what's right and wrong about them, respectively.

  I find it hilarious that the Yankee takes the time to quietly create Protestantism, as if he doesn't really know how to instill the "Protestant Work Ethic" without it.  It feels like he's playing a Civilizations video game.  Man, I'll say it again.  I love Twain.  He shows the effect of tampering with a less technologically developed culture, and does it from the perspective of the tamperer who doesn't really see anything wrong with it - Manifest Destiny through time, rather than across space.

  I'm gonna get back into it.  Hail to the King, Baby!

-Mike

Day Six - Project 3

  This is ridiculously slow-going.  I think there used to be a time in my life when I could read quickly.  It's day six, and I am not finished The Prince and the Pauper yet.  I know Magda had her dance and swim class (that's a consecutive set of activities, not concurrent) this morning, and we took a trip to the library in the afternoon, but I am just so slow now when I read.  Mary just walked in and told me she's almost finished Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors this evening.  Well, she started it this evening too.  I actually told her I would read along each week with her on her Spear-shaking.  I got through Tempest, Twelfth Night, A Winter's Tale, Macbeth, and Merchant of Racists Venice, and got really behind with Othello.  I just really REALLY hated Merchant of Venice.  I figured an English teacher should have, y'know, READ SHAKESPEARE a bit in his adult life, right?  But since I am a slow reader, and a slow reader who decided to challenge himself with Twain's bibliography, I'm falling behind not only on my project, but someone else's project, too.

  The Prince and the Pauper is pretty good.  Twain does a good job with the details of 16th century life.  I feel like the dialogue is a little over the top - like if Tom Sawyer and Joe Harper got a hold of a book of Tudor language and decided to change every word to Knightspeak, and so forsooth.  Really noticing how Twain's plot development seems to always have a series of mini-adventures that slowly bring you to the resolution.  I know people are going to say, "Wow, Mike, REAAAAAALLLLLY insightful!  That's what rising action is!"  But I mean he really tells each one as a short story with its own climax and conclusion.  Mark Twain novel's would be good for short series, like a tv mini-series or (and I don't know why I'm thinking this) a Saturday afternoon matinee serial.....Episode 12 - Tom and Huck and the mysteries of Jackson Island!  Maybe not the mid 19th century American ones, some Director would want to show how gritty and real they were by using the N-word the correct number of times based on the source material.  But I would enjoy a 2013 prince n' pauper attempt.

I found this in an article, but all her stuff is great.
http://www.jodiharvey-brown.com/book-sculptures.html

 

  Yeah, it's been a busy week.  I found a weirdly organized volume 1 of Twain's autobiography at the library (yayyy!  Using the trip as part of the time involvement in the project for today)  and "The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg", which I may read tonight as a break from his full-on novels for the rest of the night.  If I can get through Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Roughing It, most of the other novels (of which I found a few on Project Guttenburg) seem to be long short stories.  Maybe I'll find a day and do two or three of them, and find some last ditch time to get some essays and short stories.  I may not get them all, but I ain't gonna be a slouch, neither, I reck'n.  Dagnabbit, I meant yea, verily.

  Twain is awesome.

-Mike

Day Five - Project 3

 I read and read and read.  I got to 10 pages left in Huckleberry Finn last night, and realized that 4 separate times with the book on my face.  I finished it today, and started The Prince and the Pauper.

  Huckleberry Finn was pretty awesome, gotta say.  Still a lot of dissonance from the word (you know the one).  Every time I read it, I cringed, and tried to buy into the "Commentary on the society from an author trying to provoke thoughts/raise consciousness."  Tom Sawyer's involvement is fantastic because of who and what he is - an unspeakable little example of how selfishness is hardwired into children, regardless of era.

  The Prince and the Pauper is fun for me, because I didn't remember from the abridged kiddie version that it was Prince Edward Tudor, with Henry VIII and the rest.  I got into Tudor era history a little while ago.  It was only because I watched an episode of The Tudors at my friends Gil and Megan's place,and love period dramas, even if they're a little ridiculous.  It's pretty ridiculous, but one great thing about watching any TV show or movie about this era is the amount of real history recorded during it.  The number of quotes I read in an Antonia Fraser book on the wives of Henry VIII that appear almost word for word in The Tudors, A Man for All Seasons, Anne of the Thousand Days, etc., is impressive.

  I'm only a little ways into the The Prince and the Pauper, but I will say I like the way that the inciting incident is crafted.  I always thought it was a "I say, urchin, wouldst thou likest to take upon thyself mine own finery whilst I should adorn myself in yon rags?  Would it not be most excellent sport?  Murther.  Anon.  Verily."  For all the unlikelihood of the meeting and the boys' appearances, I appreciated the way Twain took it from there.

  The bell has tolled eleven, and I must away.  Exit, pursued by a crippling project workload.



  -Mike

 

Day Four - Project 3

  I have only read a few pages so far tonight, as this was a day off for students and substitutes without a current classroom of their own.  Casual Friday on the Island of Misfit Toys.  That doesn't even really apply.  Like I said, headache is still bumping around my brain, like a bullet of such low calibur that it managed to get into my skull, but can't smash its way out again.  I'm thinking of the anarcho-mystic comic book The Invisibles, when one of the main characters mentions in passing that a guy he knew made his brain tumour his totem spirit/familiar, whatever.  Named it and everything.  Maybe I should just let my headache run roughshod all over my conscience mind, see what its hooves turn up in the dust.

  Looking at the previous paragraph, probably not.

  I intend to finish Huckleberry Finn tonight, within the next hour in fact, and get underway with The Prince and the Pauper.  There is so much fun, silly hi-jink going its merry way in this book, that I want to mention the character of Jim again.  In some ways he's caricatured, but in other ways, he is only mostly decent guy in the book.  I'm not the first nor probably the millionth and first to say that.  But there is an anecdote he relates about one of his daughters that I have not been able to get out of my head.  I'm not going to spoil it or anything.  If you don't want to read the whole book, it's about the last page or so (depending on the typeset/pagesize/whatever) of Chapter XXIII.  It's flawed and it's sad and enraging and tragically comic or comically tragic and I don't know.  But I can not get the anecdote out of my head, and it makes me want to cry.

  'Nuff typed.  back to work, nose to the whetstone.*

  - Mike




*  I can't afford a grindstone.  Sand down your nose on whatever you have, really.  Save your money.

Day Three - Project 3

  Second late post in a week.  Already appearing like I'm trailing off.  When I tell you the reason for the lateness, maybe you'll forgive, or maybe you'll laugh.  Both is just jake with me.

  I played basketball yesterday.  It started harmlessly enough, with me taking shot after shot by my lonesome.  Playing basketball in a vacuum seems to be my strong suit.  You probably won't believe this, but I'm a pretty good shot - when I don't have to shoot around anyone, or, y'know, play basketball with people.  So I'm shooting hoops, and my much fitter, much stronger, much more successful baby brother sees this and says, "Stay there!  We'll get a two-on-two game going!"

  I can shoot.  That is all.  I can ride an exercise bike for hours.  My aim, and my lowest-possible-impact cardiovascular exercise do NOT make me able to duck and weave, pass and defend, or run around a court for more than 5 minutes without my lungs burning.  All I could think about was Demi Moore and Tom Cruise and Kevin Pollack trying to determine whether private Santiago's Lactic Acidosis was sped up by the involvement of others.  I remember a LOT from A Few Good Men.  Anyway, my throat was so hoarse and ragged from 10 minutes of basketball that I started coughing like I smoked two packs a day since childhood (never smoked - don't even have that for an excuse).  After three hours of this, I had coughed myself into the worst headache I've had in months. For twenty-four hours.

  My need for improvement is just glaring at times like these.  Part of me had almost said, "No, much more successful and still hair-headed little brother, I am saving basketball for a project in the summer, so obviously I can't play it now for fun."  But I can't think that way.  I had a professor in the nineties who told me a proverb from India (I can't remember from which language, but I'm pretty sure the man spoke at least four languages), and I'm probably paraphrasing, "Let knowledge come to you from all sides."  I never forgot it.  I wish I had internalized it when I was 20.  It's goodthink.  I want goodthink.

  I don't tell this non-Twain story to say why I didn't work on my project yesterday.  I tell it to say why the bjournal wasn't posted until tonight.  I laid there with a headache until 2 am, reading Huckleberry Finn.  I skipped my workout, because I had done a full extra workout a while back, and treated myself to a feet up night.  Still have the headache tonight.

  On to Huckleberry Finn.  It is good.  I don't know if I think it's not as good as Tom Sawyer, or better as yet.  I reckon I'll discover my leaning whichways or t'other, by and by (See? See the pretentious affectation?).  My real feeling is that this book is a weird (weird like how it was used in the 40s - uncanny and mysterious - BATMAN WEIRD) mirror to the movie Apocalypse Now.  Huck and Jim escaping from horror instead of travelling towards it.  All the bizzarre side adventures along the river, all the cast of strange characters sauntering in and out of the narrative aim of the protagonist (I keep imagining Robert Duvall as Lt. Col. Kilgore, but standing on the roof like Colonel Sherburn, shaming a mob into demonstrating their cowardice).

  I related this to the much smarter book reviewer who lives here, and she said, "Like Heart of Darkness."  I would like to have said, "Yeah.  Indubitably so."  Unfortunately. the three times I was supposed to read it (once in grade twelve, and twice in college) for classes I think I read about three pages in total.  Or the first page three times.  I can't remember.  And I know Apocalypse Now is based on the Conrad story.  I have a lot of surface level knowledge and pop-culture references wired in.

  But I'm sticking with my comparison.  If you like Apocalypse Now for the absurd river adventure vignettes, then you should read Huckleberry Finn.

  Stay tuned for the next expediting chapter of Vitruvian Manifesto, coming up after this.

  - Mike

Day Two - Project 3

  Tom Sawyer is done.  I mean the book is done.  The author assures me he's well and has a good job and all, but that was back in 1876, so I guess he's done, too.

  Yeah, so most of you who have read more than I have or looked up Twain's Bibliography can probably hazard a guess about the impossibility of Project 3.  My personal collection has about 6 novels, and a few short stories.  Here's just what I got from Wikipedia:

Novels

The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873)

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)

The Prince and the Pauper (1881)

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

The American Claimant (1892)

Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)

Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894)

Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc (1896)

Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896)

A Double Barrelled Detective Story (1902)

A Horse's Tale (1907)

The Mysterious Stranger (1916, posthumous)

Short stories

"Advice to Little Girls" (1865)

"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1867)

"General Washington's Negro Body-Servant" (1868)

"My Late Senatorial Secretaryship" (1868)

"Some Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and Girls" (1875)

"A Literary Nightmare" (1876)

"A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage" (1876)

"The Invalid's Story" (1877)

"The Great Revolution in Pitcairn" (1879)

"1601: Conversation, as it was by the Social Fireside, in the Time of the Tudors" (1880)

"The Stolen White Elephant" (1882)

"Luck" (1891)

"Those Extraordinary Twins" (1892)

"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" (1900)

"A Dog's Tale" (1904)

"Extracts from Adam's Diary" (1904)

"The War Prayer" (1905)

"Eve's Diary" (1906)

"Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven" (1909)

"My Platonic Sweetheart" (1912, posthumous)

"The Private Life of Adam and Eve" (1931, posthumous)

Collections

Short story collections

Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance (1871), short story collection

Sketches New and Old (1875), short story collection

A True Story and the Recent Carnival of Crime (1877), short story collection

Punch, Brothers, Punch! and Other Sketches (1878), short story collection

Mark Twain's Library of Humor (1888), short story collection

Merry Tales (1892), short story collection

The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories (1893), short story collection

The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories (1906), short story collection

The Curious Republic of Gondour and Other Whimsical Sketches (1919, posthumous), short story collection

The Washoe Giant in San Francisco (1938, posthumous), short story collection

Essay collections

Memoranda (1870-1871), essay collection from Galaxy

How to Tell a Story and other Essays (1897)

Europe and Elsewhere (1923, posthumous), edited by Albert Bigelow Paine

Letters from the Earth (1962, posthumous)

A Pen Warmed Up In Hell (1972, posthumous)[2]

The Bible According to Mark Twain (1996, posthumous)[3]

Essays

"The Awful German Language" (1880)

"Advice to Youth" (1882)

"Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" (1895)

"English As She Is Taught" (1887)

"Concerning the Jews" (1898)

"A Salutation Speech From the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth" (1900)

"To the Person Sitting in Darkness" (1901)

"To My Missionary Critics" (1901)

"Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany" (1901)

"What Is Man?" (1906)

"Christian Science" (1907)

"Queen Victoria's Jubilee" (1910)

"The United States of Lyncherdom" (1923, posthumous)

Non-fiction

The Innocents Abroad (1869), travel

Roughing It (1872), travel

Old Times on the Mississippi (1876), travel

A Tramp Abroad (1880), travel

Life on the Mississippi (1883), travel

Following the Equator (1897), travel

Is Shakespeare Dead? (1909)

Moments with Mark Twain (1920, posthumous)

Mark Twain's Notebook (1935, posthumous)

Other writings

Is He Dead? (1898), play

"The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Updated" (1901), satirical lyric

"King Leopold's Soliloquy" (1905), satire

"Little Bessie Would Assist Providence" (1908), poem

Slovenly Peter (1935, posthumous), children's book

Autobiography and letters

Mark Twain's Autobiography

Chapters from My Autobiography published by North American Review (1906–1907)

Posthumous edition compiled and edited by Albert Bigelow Paine (1924)

Posthumous edition named Mark Twain in Eruption compiled and edited by Bernard DeVoto (1940)

Posthumous edition compiled and edited by Charles Neider

Posthumous edition compiled and edited by Harriet Elinor Smith and the Mark Twain Project: Volume 1 (2010)

Mark Twain's Letters, 1853–1880 (2010, posthumous)

   Tom Sawyer's done, and I've got three pages of Huckleberry Finn under my belt.  So another 5-6 months worth of reading in 8 days, and I should be set to rights.

  Okay, I'm licked. 

  I'm gonna take a trip to the library tomorrow, see what they've got of this list.

  On a happier note, I loved Tom Sawyer as much this time as the times I started it.  It's hard to explain why I like it.  The dialogue is great and there're lots of little adventures.  The ending was a little pat for me, but nothing to really complain about.  What I like about the book is what I like about HBO.  My favourite HBO series (Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome, Big Love) all had an unapologetic internal morality that was not really the modern day western world progressive sensibility.  A lot of the old cast-of-thousands toga movies I like shove a lot of 1950s American ideals about freedom and liberty into stories and places and time periods that had nothing to do with them.  The HBO shows don't.  The morality of the show Rome is horrible, horrible Roman morality.  Watch Deadwood, and see how romantic and noble the Wild West was.

  What I like about Tom Sawyer is the story's internal morality and worldview is that of a little boy, of the 19th century.  Twain's depiction of Tom's reasoning and logic is so much fun.

  I've got to get back to Huckleberry Finn, because, you know, no due diligence and all that. 

-Mike