on being the man...

today, I realized that I am without a doubt, the man. I rip off my students extra time and I expect them to like it. For the students, the 10 minutes between the bell ending and the bell beginning class is the biggest scrap of free time they get with their friends, or the only chance they get to catch up on homework.

I almost always run my classes long. Even if the kids clearly don't give a shit, I run long, I don't even think twice.

What makes me sure that I'm not so cool and rebelious and anarchistic is that without thinking, I had really started to believe that the kids have no reason to be upset, and in general that the students ought to conform and be quiet and be good students and all that. I really have started to treat the kids like cattle.

I think this is the real face of growing older, enfranchised and conservative. You start to get over the troubles and trials from your earlier life, and start to think about the easiest way to do things, and before you know it, you're just conforming, and loving it. and starting to feel a certain distate with people who are wasting time and effort being silly and struggling with teenage problems.

(The word and concerns associated with conforming start to seem pretty stupid too.)

none of the above.

Hiya hiya.
So, I'm still happy to be writing this blog, but I don't really think it's of use to anyone to hear me alternately complain about and praise the weather and japan. I'm not sure what else I would do with it though.

if I were to write about my daily life, you (the reader) would get really bored really fast. I actually have resolved lately to try to spend at least two hours daily from 4pm until midnight NOT in front of my computer. I have failed each of the first three attempts.
Its not that I hate my computer, or that I'm bored. Quite the contrary. The internet is a big enough place to play forever, and if I am ever looking for something to do (which I always am) there's a little white box with an apple drawn on it beckoning me.

If I were to write about my fields of expertise... well, I don't really have that much expertise. I know more about piracy and the japanese language than the average english speaker, to be sure, but neither is a really compelling subject for daily or weekly updates.

Instead, I write about this blog. which is super dumm.

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Yesterday, for the first time since August 2003, I wrote a little "state of the nate" letter to the four members of my family who have email addresses. If you don't have any rugrats dirtying up your house, that kind of letter can sound really really self important. (unlike everything else I write)... I couldn't avoid writing a little bit about the weather in that letter either. Incidentally, it's a little sprinkly today, and the roads are wet, so the cars driving by make much more noise. the weathers a bit glum, but I am genki pie.

what kind of establishment is this?

A. A blog about someone's daily life.
B. A blog about a specific topic on which the author has expertise.
C. An aggregation of links.
D. An investigative new blog.

I get a lot of hits lately, and it's all for one thing... so now I'm going to mention that thing again, and assure that the hits keep rolling in. finalspoof. Hell, I'll even bump myself up a bit more... finalspoof updates.

Ah. Now that that's off my chest, I wanna give a very simple history lesson. This is something I should have had a much better grasp of, long long ago, so if it's painfully obvious, I'm sorry.

The new deal was FDRs plan to shore up a country reeling from the impact of the 29 crash, right. Well, the heart and soul of the new deal was that the government has the best interests of its people in mind, and thus a democratically elected government (especially beholden to the well-being of the people) will always be better suited to improving life for everyone than the laissez-faire capitalism that was directly responsible for the last decade of grief.
Ever since then, the us government republican or democrat has seen itself as directly responsible for the well being of the economy, and by proxy its people.

At the same time, the privately owned media began to be exploited as platform for industry to assert how they are the only ones really capable of making the lives of the working man better. So that's been the voice of the media for generation after generation, through a handful of wars, right down to today, and they've never blinked once.

All the interim presidents faced off against industry continually (at least publically) until Reagan, but the new guy... i think his name is bush... genuinely believes that private industry is better suited to serve the good of the people. Not only that, but perversely, he believes that industry is also well qualified to regulate itself in every regard.

So the new deal is not only rolled back, we're in an anit-new deal era. The protections that brought the American economy to the top of the heap, and american wages high enough to make us powerful, prosperous and fat are all gone. Of course the literal legislation of the new deal is being taken apart piece by piece, but the real thrust was demolished the minute our pro industry, anti government president was elected *cough*.

just had to string that together for myself.

young-at-heart

young-at-heart
Originally uploaded by notnato.

Theres a little party coming up in a month's time. We're gonna have Fantastic Plastic Machine playing at our little hip hop club. Y'all should come.
I think an English teacher friend of mine is involved in the organization of this, and she says she doesn't really care how corrupted by foreigners this affair is.
Oh, and Fantastic Plastic Machine is pretty cool, and I have it on good authority that the other DJs won't be bad either. Y'all really should come.

(I love the name of the group organizing this thing. "The kidz are all night".)

the goonies r good enough.

It's been a long time I shouldna left you, left you
without a dope beat to step to, step to.

That's how I'd say it if I were a ubiquitous hip-hop producer anyway. I'm not though. I'm just a dude who was really sick for a while, and then too "fake busy" to make a blog entry. Well those heady days are passed.

I back to reorganizing stuff on my computer, and wondering why I can't save any money. And that means it's time for a blog entry.

I had a short list of things that were kind of on my mind... like why I dislike zen, or the link between the japanese attitude toward tourism, service and sex; there was also some whining to do about my girlfriend. None of that feels salient right now though.

Right now, it's GTD. There's this little cult of organization and productivity floating around the technologically elite circles of the internet called "getting things done". As a procrastinator in the "I'll brush my teeth tomorrow" sense, I'm always up for a few words about how to actually get about it, and get some things ... um done. What I've gleaned from what I've read is that this stuff is geared toward people who have more stuff to do than time to do it.

Boy howdy, that ain't me. In fact, I'm not sure I'm capable of that kind of living. Even when I had a ridiculous course load (highest number of classes allowed ever at my school) for my last cramitallinatonce semester in college, I still found a lot of time to realize that I suck at RTS games... and Civ III as well.
I could easily double the number of hours I work in a week right now, and not feel particularly stressed. When I was working 90 hour weeks for a while before college, I was more bored than stressed. I'm not sure what it is, but I am a type B personality to the core. (and also have never had a job with all that much responsibility)

Still, Im playing around with this GTD stuff, and I'm thinking... maybe I can open up even more time for warcraft and renaming my mp3s. and make blog entries that won't even be fun to read.

Highly reccommended cutesy movie time: yay!

(also, Im using a posting client now that doesnt let me put titles on these things. I'm not suddenly pretentious and scandanavian... any more than usual.)

Ahhh. That was good. There's a party going on down at the park, or rather a matsuri. Consequentally, there's tons of the japanese equivalent of carnival booths... except the focus is mostly food. So I went there for dinner.

I had a tako yaki, miso konnyaku on a stick, corn on the cob, and a chocolate covered banana on a stick. This festival was a little shy on sweets, though not at all shy on "on a stick" foods.

Today, I spent most of the day working on the mac. I've beaten it into submission well enough now that I'm coming around a bit. There are some things about it that I really do like. Maybe the nicest thing right now is the nostalgia factor. All the piracy is done with simple serial numbers. I've got a bunch of little programs to carry out the tasks I need, and even a little serial number keeper that gets monthly updates. It's like I'm 18 again.

Moving to a new computer is more time consuming than moving to a new apartment (or country?).

So, my desk is neat; I have skype running well (lemme know if you wanna talk); the ford is in his fliver; and my iPod seems happier already.