Posts Tagged ‘08’
Given my recent addiction to presidential campaigns of all flavors and recent eras, I tend to see the world around me in terms of national politics. My addiction got crazy enough that I can comfortably postulate that, given a subject, I could tie anything to Election ’08 within three degrees of separation.
Hypocrisy at the highest level of a religious movement? From John McCain to Pastor Hagee to American Evangelicals to homophobe Tom Haggard buying meth off of a gay prostitute.
The only reason I bring up the presidential campaign is that I’m playing Final Fantasy, a Japanese video game series rather successfully imported to the States. Specifically, I was playing with the chocobos of Final Fantasy VII. These chocobos are best described as creatures your characters can ride as if these creatures were magical horses, rather than the magical, monocolored ostriches they look like.
In Final Fantasy VII, you can breed chocobos, eventually coming up with up to five different varieties, with each variety distinguished by a given color.
Today’s anecdote begins with the understanding that I like to name my bred chocobos in such a way that I can easily identify them just by looking at their names. Grace is the green chocobo; Wren is the wonderful chocobo; Blake is the blue chocobo.
Too bad I didn’t think ahead. I forgot about what I’d call the black chocobo who would be the offspring of Blake and Grace. Besides Blake, I couldn’t think of any other boy names that begins with the letter B and includes, somewhere, the letter K. Hurriedly clicking my way to a baby name Web site, I almost immediately found the answer.
I hesitated. I almost didn’t want to give my new chocobo this name, because seen by the wrong person, it could be taken the wrong way. Within two minutes, I gave in to my sick sense of humor, anyway. Within nine minutes, I decided to share my depravity with the world.
Meet Barack, my newly hatched black chocobo. When he grows up, he’s going to be president.
More importantly, there’s no way I could forget his name.
Check this out:
Though other, longer-lived blogs have found limited success with this, I’m confident that my meager double-digit Technorati authority will lift On the Tenure Track to the cusp. Which cusp is another matter, for another date.
Just click on the image above, and select On the Tenure Track when you do the poll. I’m about halfway down the list or so.
In the meantime, enjoy the following historical recording of the first high-tech user helpline.
We saw this in my godforsaken credential class, using it as a touchstone for discussion about English-language learners and how best to reach out when teaching the really basic skills. That in high school we have to teach really basic skills is a travesty. Call it a tragedy, if you prefer, but I try to avoid cliches.
How basic should I get, when I deal with real, mainstreamed English language learners? How much should I rely on modeling, or pictures, or charts, or graphs? Any more than normal, or should I instead concentrate on vocabulary acquisition?
