No He'sa Not, He's Wearing a Neck-a-the!

Well, now I know how to cause a comotion in my form class. I just have to show up wearing a tie.
I suppose they haven't seen me in a tie all year, and I wasn't wearing one this morning, so it did come as a bit of a shock to the poor kiddies. And it is the last day of the year. Still, the reaction was extreme and varied. Mostly they just thought it was funny, which I kind of agree with, but one kid started criticising me for wearing my old ratty zip-off pants with a nice shirt and tie. She was right, but it wasn't really very helpful.

Fortunately, 2 other students leapt to my defence (no, really, they actually did leap to my defence) with hearty cries of:

"Shut up, he looks good."

and

"He looks better than you you stupid cow!"

It was sweet, and an aggressive form of bullying, but sweet. I shall probably not wear a tie tomorrow, as I won't be on stage for the Y9 prizegiving. I am a little excited about the prospect of 2 lessons to go. If they weren't 2 Year 9 lessons, it'd be even better (unless they were Y10, which could be worse I suppose).

Evidently my Y9 class were really good for their reliever this afternoon, and my other Y9 class were really good this morning (for them), so maybe I'll revise my last-day-grammar-lesson plans, and try to organise a last-day-quiz with some sort of candy as prizes.

Then I get to eat the left-over candy too!

The awesomely chilling spelling of the undead

Check out this spine chilling blog, if you dare. Cower at the bad spelling! Gasp at the cheesiness! See the missing apostrophes! (well, OK, you can't see the missing apostrophes because they aren't there, but you get my meaning.
Enter the lair of the living dead if you dare...

Down with The Man!

What a pleasant weekend it has been! It started well, with a couple of hours of work on my second Scenario Design Contest entry, before leaving work and heading for home. Then plans were made to meet up with some good folks in town and eat delicious Japanese food at Miyabi Sushi and then head to Readings and see Bridget Jones 2.
The food was, as anticipated, oishii, and the company was fine and hilarious. Some of the conversation, about the most disgusting things people had ever eaten (deep fried chicken cartilage or pregnant cow womb in my case), dodgy parental goings on, and other odd comments, were a little on the strange side, but that’s just the way I like it.

We joked at length on the way to Readings about the prospect of going to Regency cinema (formerly Manners Mall, where I once worked). Debbie and I have seen a couple of movies there since we got back from Japan, and each time there were less than 10 or so people in the theatre. They were renovating their entranceway as well, which just added to the spooky ghost-ride appearance of the ‘abandoned cinema’. In the end, we had to go there because Readings was more or less sold out. It was, as anticipated, very very quiet there.

Before the movie came on, there was an ad for Chanel number 5 – possibly directed by Baz Luhrman? It had Nicole Kidman in it, and appeared to be a huge budget affair. The end of the ad had a few words pop up – Chanel Number 5, experience the elegance, spend the money, smell the smell, that kind of thing. As the ad was finishing, one of the 15 or so other patrons in the theatre yelled out "Capitalist Brand Brainwashing!" at the screen (or at the world?). I couldn’t help laughing, I mean Bridget Jones is not exactly the most shining example of an anti-capitalist, counter-culture film. I didn’t notice whether the activist in questions was drinking coke whilst shouting the slogan, but it seemed a particularly strange thing to do whilst at a commercial Hollywood movie.

After the movie there was nattering and cool refreshing drinkables, and then late night driving, and falling over with the tiredness.

Saturday was pretty awesome too – horse feeding, parent visiting, a little exercise (I’m not very good at exercise, but it is good for me), and then a road trip. Boargaming and gossiping with M&D were a lot of fun in northern climes, though the drive home was very tiring. And now – a Sunday with not too many commitments. A little work to do, a teeny bit of shopping, but mostly just chilling out.

Sweet.

I must look competent sometimes

Hmmm, despite all evidence to the contrary, people seem to think I'm knowledgeable and hard working. I must have a good poker face.
Actually, I suspect that I am rather more diligent than I give myself credit for. I just like to really slack when I am slacking off. I've spent the morning looking at AV stuff for the school, having been identified as a guy who know some stuff about things. I guess I know some stuff about the world of AV, and it's kinda fun to go through catalogues and pick shiny things for the school to acquire. Sadly it doesn't look like there will be enough xtra reward scheme points left over for me to get an i-pod, though the idea was not dismissed as unreasonable. So there may be perks after all.

I also learned that my prize-giving efforts have not gone unnoticed, which is pleasing. What's especially good is that prize-giving is not currently eating all of my free time, since I have 8 extra periods a week of free time in which to do stuff.

So, I am well pleased with my professional reputation. It is a very good thing none of these people have seen me actually teach, or they would no doubt be horrified. But when I'm not in a classroom, I seem to be doing OK. Yay me.

I have also finished my longest every SDC entry. It is way too long. Next year my goal is to write a simple, straightforward scenario. I want to get lean next year, not the bloated monstrosity I put together this time. It looks pretty though, which is what really matters in a scenario.

Oh yeah - I also booked the school's digital projector over the holiday period! w00t! It's just as easy and above board as taking out books for holiday reading! Yay!!!!

Struggling with motivation

I am currently finding it a little difficult to concentrate, or indeed to accomplish much. I have a fair amount of time on my hands, but I'm really struggling to use it productively. I have found and reformatted a version of the Baba Yaga myth, with an eye to using it with my students (who are currently working on a storytelling unit). I have in the back of my mind a plan to throw several stories at the class with accompanying worksheets, allow them to read and answer, then get some of them to tell the stories to the class. Of course, for this to work, I need to have several stories and worksheets.
Ah, the curse of the first year teacher. Ideas are cheap, the resources to get them off the ground take time and effort. Once I've done this, it'll be there ready for next time, but round one, she is a bastardos. If I'm aiming for 4 stories, I'm only a quarter of the way there...

The weekend was cool - dinner and boardgames with L&S on Friday, Orpheus on Saturday, and lovely sunshiney dog walking and bbq visiting on Sunday. Very pleasant. Bring on the weekend again, I say! And after that... the very, very nice looooooong weekend of summer :)

Cat RPG

Last night we played a game of Cat, by John Wick. It was very cool. We played a range of strange cats, fighting monster types that our human owners could not see. It was very, very silly at times, which is awesome for our Thursday group. I lime'um the light, stress-reliefy type games on the Thursday of a hard week. Of course, the more serious games are cool too, but I do like a bit of sillyness, and this game had lots:
*Black Fang, a tomcat, spraying on everything, including humans (dead and alive).
*2 cats called Boris (by freak chance), though one had the real name Boris and the other was merely called Boris by his human(s).
*2 Russian accents, 1 Mexican, and a whole bunch of accidental accents and weird amalgams somewhere in between.
*Random cat cuteness
*2 cats hiding under a box to cross the road, getting scared half way across the road and making themselves look big, whilst still inside the box.
*crazy kung-fu cat action
*cat abuse with towels and pills to swallow (damn those humans!)
*spicy fishes!
*scary hip-thrusting and facial expressions whilst spraying/rubbing/smarming

It was alllll good! Purrfect even!

I shake my fist and sneer!

Warning: This is trite Friday-afternoon navel gazing. It may make you physically ill.
I have been reading some interesting posts over on Cha0sslave's LJ about not liking certain groups of people or behaviours, and expressing that emotion. It's a very good thing that I have met and know a little about Troll, as he's a decent guy by all accounts. His posts are often vehement, and he does seem to get angry about things sometimes, but he also expresses himself with a poetic turn of phrase, and is quite capable of rational writing that gives some background to his invective.

So what was the verdict? That it was worth looking at, and that it made me think about people I've known and people I see. Extreme views are not popular with the majority, but are generally tolerated as long as they aren't waved around in anyone's face or cause problems. Some people think they are problems, I reserve judgement on that for now.

What I would say (and was going to comment on Troll's LJ, but thought it might get long-winded and pointless, so I'd say it here), was that certain life experiences make you feel that you are in a position of privelleged knowledge. Anyone who was once agnostic or an atheist, and has a revelation that causes them to take up a religion, will probably want to spread the word. They might well try to convince their friends and family to follow them, and fair enough too. Anyone who was once ignorant (and that's pretty much all of us to one extent or another) is likely to view the opinions they once held as being 'naive' or invalid. This will lead them to oppose those views, and potentially try to change other people's minds about them.

Of course, other people may not have reached their viewpoints by the same route as you, or they may have abandoned your current standpoint in favour of the views you used to hold, so whilst it looks like they need enlightening, all you'll be doing is bumping heads.

So what? Any point here to be made? I guess all I was thinking about was that my feelings of superiority, wisdom, or knowledge are predicated on my experiences, and a desire to enlighten those who have not yet reached a similar state is natural, if not useful. Some viewpoints are opposed, and if each party believes themselves possessed of inside knowledge (about the human condition, about morality, about cooking...) then there's unlikely to be an easy way to resolve the differences.

Simple Version: I used to be a dumb-ass, but now I am terribly terribly smart. I think people who act like I used to are dumb-asses, but that one day they might be as smart as I so clearly am. I also think that if I try to change them, they will probably hate me. If I educate them, trying to expose them to ideas that will take them down the same path I've been down, then maybe there is hope. But they're not listening, and most of the time I'm not even trying.

Loverly Photos

We received a package in the mail yesterday, and were pleasantly surprised by the contents. Photos from our trip to Christchurch to visit L&G and a chinese pop song on a CD, and a DVD of the Vincent Price version of I am Legend wich Adam had mentioned a little while ago on his blog. Sugoi!
I am currently wanting to buy a new digital camera. The beasty we have now has served us well over the years, and is still very cool, but there are other kinds of cameras that have different kinds of coolness that tempt me. Ye olde camera takes photos onto floppy disks, which does mean that if people borrow it there's no trouble with them getting their pics. And it has a 10x optical zoom, which is coolies. And it's easy to use, and all round full of goodness.

Unfortunately, it's a little big and heavy. A little, light-weight, point and click digital camera would be a cool thing to have. A certain mother mentioned these as potential Christmas presents whilst we were in Christchurch, so I have no plans to rush out and buy one, but I have been looking at shiny things on websites...

Oh yeah, Christmas. I guess now would not be a bad time to start thinking about presents for the peeps. Then again, with school being as time-consuming as ever (despite the reduced number of classes) maybe that's something best left for the holidays.

Just taking a break

Things have indeed quietened down, and I'm taking meself a break. I have begun the task of writing Junior reports. This is not a fun task, but it has to be done. I'm thinking I might do them in batches of 5 or 6, taking a break between each batch. Hopefully that will keep me from going mad.
I had planned on watching Rah Xephon whilst doing my reports - using the English department laptop. Sadly there is some sort of software problem, so the dvd player isn't working. Poop. I could waste a couple of hours trying to get it to work, but I should really be writing reports anyway, and having Anime running over the top of the reports is unlikely to make me better at my job. So I've contented myself with listening to music whilst writing, something that is much less obviously silly. J-pops and reports - a heady mix!

Too... Much... Marking...

I am pleased to note that I am still, mostly, sane, despite the mountain of marking I have just waded through. Of course, it was actually only a foothill compared to the amount of marking either Debbie or I had for senior exams, so I really shouldn't complain, but it was very tedious. Still, it is now in the past tense, as in completed, done and gone.
Now I have the challenge of figuring out what to teach my Year 9 classes in their last 12 lessons. There is just a little bit of 'tidying up' work to do on the short story units the classes have been working on, then... something.

I am considering getting them to do either performance storytelling, or speeches. They've done a lot of writing this year (numerous essays, reviews, personal responses and so on), so I think a little bit of speaking practice at the end of the year would be a good thing. Of course, I'll have to have boring worksheet style work to use as a threat/backup for days when the class isn't polite enough to listen, which could well end up being most days ;)

the Weekend, She Looms

Ah yes, the long week has slipped by and a kind of peace descends onto the Matt. No more classes to teach, no more exams to supervise. My life is quiet and peaceful once more, with weekendy goodness awaiting just around the corner.
I have 50 or so exams to mark, and Junior Prizegiving is only a few weeks off so the work will pick up for that, but right now, I'm pretty chilled out.

Every time I've sat down to blog in the past couple of weeks, I've had some mad time pressure making me rush. I feel like there was a lot I wanted to say, but didn't have the time. Now, time is there (ticking away, but not in a stressifying way). So what was it I wanted to say?

I think litter is important. I decided this last night, or rather I expressed it in concrete terms. The environment of a school is a direct reflection of the students who attend, and their attitude. My school is not tidy, nor is my classroom. See, I think tidyness is important, and I fight against litter and disrespect, but there's a culture of laziness at this school that extends to dropping rubbish wherever you happen to be standing when it becomes rubbish - whether that's in a classroom, on the field, 2 feet away from a rubbish bin.

It's close enough to the end of the year that I can start planning for next year, and one of the things I'm going to do is become a litter-Nazi, to use a slightly negative term for what is a positive move. I'm not going to tolerate a single piece of litter in my classroom, and I'm going to persecute the hell out of anyone who dares to litter in front of me. I'm going to blow it all out of proportion, make it a capital crime, and see what happens. Should be fun.

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Greg the Bunny is the coolest show ever. Or perhaps, it's the coolest behind-the-scenes edgy puppet show ever. It's the late night, adult-oriented nephew of The Muppet Show, and it is da bomb. Hilarious, and very, very rewatchable. Debbie and I have been rationing it out, making the first viewing take a reasonable length of time. Some nights we can't help ourselves, and we watch 2 episodes, but most nights we limit ourselves to one. Soon, we will have seen them all, and might consider lending the DVDs to people. Of course, it's on TV in NZ at the moment, so y'all could watch it anyway (Tuesday nights, channel 3, around 11:45pm I think?).

When the seniors are gone, the work level will drop.

Prizegiving went off without too many hitches last night. It was nice to see all the work pay off, and in places I would even go so far as to describe the evening as enjoyable.
There now remains the lesser (but with less lead-in time) junior prizegiving, sorting out the marks for all my classes for the year (yay paperwork!), teaching and trying to survive the horrors of junior exam bell times. Having interval start 10 minutes earlier for the Y10's makes the Y9's very, very jumpy. Even though the Y10's start up again earlier, so nobody gets more time out of class, it's all very messy and the kids find it all terribly unfair.

I've been working on my SDC entries some more - nearly finished the first. I was hoping to print it out today and get Debbie to take a look, but the printer at work has a super-wedgy paper jam, so I can't print anything. Boo.

Maybe next week will be a little calmer? Who knows... Whatever the case, I shall have to have my wits about me in order not to miss any classes, and will have to work hard and not get distracted if I'm to be anything even remotely resembling up-to-date. So far, so good, but it's only half way through day one of the exams.

I want my jim-jams! I want to go to sleep! Shut it off!

Ethical Quandry

Which is worse: 'flicking the V's' at a cat (rude gesture, 2 fingers up), or insulting a person in a language they don't understand?
And more importantly, perhaps, would it concern you to see one of your daughter's teachers run out of his house, across the driveway, and give the fingers to a neighbour's cat (which had been on the aforementioned teacher's property, and had just been chased off by the teacher's own cat)?

Awesome

This thank-you card was the best (and only) one I received today. It's nice to have students who appreciate their teachers ;) The inside mentioned that "...you're a good drawer, but not as good as us. hope we get you next year!"

Awwwww.

Too busy to blog!

Gahk. The last couple of days have been very, very busy. Prizegiving is looming, and the work keeps on piling up. It's actually not that bad, or that much work - it's just that it's all extra work on top of all the usual stuff. Was at school late on Wednesday, running around like a madman yesterday, and today has been muchos fun - neither of the 2 lessons that I wrote relief for have had a reliever so far, so I've been doing 2 jobs at once.
Yay!

Anyhoos, updates over the weekend, but in brief:
*Prizegiving is time consuming.
*Bush won. Sigh.
*We have Greg the Bunny on DVD, and it is excellent!
*The weekend is coming. Sadly I have to go into school on Sunday to do pants work.

And more!

Jolly Fun Chin Wagging

Last night was the November WARGs meeting, which featured the much anticipated SDC workshop [the SCD is Kapcon's Scenario Design Competition, one-off 3 hour RPG scenario writing competition]. Debbie and I zoomed down to the meeting, via Debbie's parents place (collecting jewellery left behind over the weekend, and having coffee and delicious freshly baked scones). We arrived on time (ie before 7pm) but announcements had already started. I don't think we missed more than a couple of minutes though.
The talk was run by Dale, and there were about ten people in attendance. It was very interesting, hearing Dale talk about the process of marking scenarios, approaches to writing them, and approaches to writing in general. Dale obviously has a lot of experience with writing, and has clearly thought about it a good deal. He had some very interesting advice and insight into the whole process, which was cool. He was also an organised and entertaining speaker, which made the evening very pleasant.

I talked for a few minutes about entering the SDC, what it has been like and how I went about it. A couple of people seemed surprised that I currently have about 5 SDC entries open. I guess that might seem a little ambitious/obsessive. There are basically 5 files on my computer, each one with a varying level of actual work done on it, each one a potential SDC entry. I'm aiming to get 2 fully done this year, and keep the rest for later. I've already run 3 of the games, 2 are ideas yet to be put into practice. This means that 3 of the games already have a good level of conceptual completeness, but none are yet fully written up. I figure it's probably better to aim to do 2, and do them well, than it is to rush through 3. Oddly, it's the one I started in February (January?) that's likely to be left to last. Huh.

Anyhoos, I never have to teach my senior classes again, all going well. That's pretty hella cool. They have classes tomorrow and Friday, but I'm off doing some kind of menial labour for the prizegiving, so I don't teach them. So, I guess, I've now taught a full year for 2 classes. Weird. The juniors are still around for several more weeks (until the 3rd of December, maybe?), so I still have to teach. And Senior Prizegiving, followed by Junior Prizegiving, will keep me plenty busy. But the seniors are gone for me, now. I hope they do well in their exams - for their sake, and for my self-esteem as a teacher. I know that some of them have learned some things in English this year, but there are quite a few about whom I am unsure...

Evil with donkey ears

Well, Halloween has been and gone again. There were trick-or-treaters wandering the neighbourhood, but none came to our place whilst we were home. The funniest group were a gaggle of four foot high witches, some in stripy socks, who seemed to have picked up a single eyore-eared fairy. The effect was truly terrifying, and I'm sure they snagged a decent haul of candy.
Our weekend featured a very pleasant trip North to visit M&D in PN. There was win and cheese, boardgames and curry, and much gossip. The boardgames were very fun, and have left me with the desire to play more.

It turns out that I am hopelessly incompetent at TransAmerica. I lost about 8 out of 9 hands, sometimes by a substantial margin (the worst was 9 points, which is quite bad when you consider that you die when you've lost 12 points).

On the plus side, my craving for Puerto Rico was satiated, in a very satisfying manner. Hearing giffy talk about the bean game made me mad-keen for Puerto Rico, and I actually did pretty well for a change. No chance to play Settlers or Caracasonne - next time maybe.

I also did a little shopping for the prizegiving. A colleague and I toodled down to the local bookshops to choose books for the kiddies who have excelled this year. We went with a dual theme - NZ Flava (History of, Authors/Poets, Biographies of famous -ers), and anti-America (Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore etc.). Hopefully the rest of the committee will be happy with our purchases!

It's true because I want it to be!

It’s interesting to hear the kinds of things students say to justify their opinions. They firmly believe that some teachers are picking on them when they punish them for talking /eating /slacking in class. Some students will ascribe God-like powers of knowledge to teachers, and will complain if a teacher claims not to know the answer to an entirely random question.
And sometimes they’re convinced that teachers couldn’t possibly know anything which they would consider to be ‘cool’, and will assume that teachers are bluffing.

In the past few weeks, I’ve had 2 contradictory statements made about me by students, one on the offence and one in defence. I’m glad that they aren’t sure about me. The first comment was “Have a good weekend Mr, lay off the weed.” It was said at that sub-audible level where it’s easiest to ignore, as the student was saying it to impress a friend, and didn’t really want me to hear it. The second comment was, “oh, he wouldn’t know what it smelt like anyway!” Nice to know that some students think of me as too square to know about illegal shenanigans.

Of course, the number of students who smoke pot at school would be a crash-course for most teachers in beach-type schools, regardless of their past experiences ;)

On a decidedly other track, the game last night was lots of fun. There was more game than there was time, so parts were a little rushed, but it was still worthwhile and enjoyable. The original Hound of the Baskervilles can be found here.

And the cosplay page I made for the TGS cosplay has had over 200 visits! Being linked to from the Armageddon site led to a huge jump. Nice to know the work and photos are being appreciated!

New Toy

We got a scanner-printer-copier thingy over the weekend. It's nice and shiny, and fast compared to our many-years-old-not-really-functional scanner. Now we can scan and colour pictures before, during, and after the bovine homecoming. Huzzah!

Where has all my time gone?

I knew in advance that the last 2 weeks before Senior students go on exam leave would be busy, but boy has this week been painful. Being part of the prizegiving committee (in a dogsbody capacity) has sucked up time, along with the usual planning and marking and so on.
I am really looking forward to the end of next week.

Add to the boring work-type stuff the preparation of tonight's Penny Dreadful game, and you have a tired Matt. The game is shaping up nicely, and should be a lot of fun. It could be too much fun in places, as giving my Thursday regulars a family to play might lead to some chaos. Should be worth many a laugh.

I had best get my nose back to the grindstone - one more lesson today, three tomorrow to plan for. I shan't be doing any work after school today, as tidying and last minute game stuff will take up all my time, so I'd better get these 4 lessons sorted!

Back in amongst it

Well, it's certainly a pleasure to have a long weekend to play with, and a pleasure too to have one's senior reports written and proof-read and all done. The weekend was fantastic - many things were watched via projector (Secret Window, Holes, Farenheit 9/11, the remake of Dawn of the Dead, Fiesta, Rah Xephon, The Storyteller (2 or 3 episodes), Jeeves and Wooster, Azumanga Daioh). Some of the films were very scary (F9/11, DotD), others were pretty good fun (SW, H), and some were very crazy - the 54 minute Mexican musical (dialogue in English with accents, singing virtually incomprehensible, sometimes in Spanish?) stands out in this field.
We saw many peeps, hung out and played of the boardgames (Buffy, Lord of the Rings, Uno), and ate many yummy snacks.

Sadly, we had work to do yesterday, and to make matters worse I developed a pretty bad headache. Poop.

And now I'm back at work, with a short week to teach. The wee kiddies are all a-flutter due to long weekend vibes, and the end of term being in sight for the seniors. *sigh*

I have work to prepare, and a game to accessorise for Thursday (the second Penny Dreadful Game - The Beast of the Baskervilles ). I had best drag myself away from blogland, and try to get some of this work stuff done and out of the way. Hope y'all had good weekends (long or otherwise), thanks to all our visitors for your fine company, and sayonara.

Thanks for the input

It has been a while since I had students giving me fashion advice, but today the phenomenon reared its head once more. When I had shorter hair, and changes were more noticeable, I frequently had students saying things like:
"What happened to your mo-hawk Mr? It was mad."

or

"Haven't you heard of styling products?"

or

"Are you on your way to church or something?"

It was always a great boost to the old ego to have scruffy 14-year-olds sneering at my sartorial choices. Things had been quiet on this front for a whiles, until yesterday when a student decided to try a subtle form of persuasion. As she walked past me on the way to English, she said quietly (just loud enough for me to hear) mumumum the sideburns.

I wasn't sure about the murmur bit - was it 'lose the sideburns' or 'cool sideburns' or 'fishcakes sideburns'? I asked her today at the end of class, and sadly it was 'lose the sideburns'. It's nice that students care enough to have an opinion, but I'm not sure about them trying to subliminally program me to alter my 'fashion' choices.

Square Eyes

In the past few days I've watched a few movies, as well as some Anime and some awesome TV. In brief, here's the breakdown:
Duplex, directed by Danny Devito, was terrible. It starred Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore, and was a story about a couple who buy a 2 story house, the upper story of which has been converted into a flat, which is occupied by a horrendously annoying old lady. The couple get very angry, and decide to kill the old lady. Wackiness ensues. The reason I didn't like it was that it was incredibly aggravating. This may be what Mr Devito was aiming for, but it really didn't make it fun to watch. It combined the worst elements of Home Alone and Sylvester and Tweety, and had an incredibly unconvincing and unsatisfying ending. It was so bad that we turned it off after an hour to play Tekken and swear at the characters, just to release some of the frustration of watching it. I managed to get through the 3rd act only by doing ironing at the same time, to make it more fun.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse, on the other hand, was excellent. I love the horror genre, am a big zombie fan, enjoy the Resident Evil games, and like a bit of monster action in my films. This delivered on all fronts. With the exception of the painfully loud cinema (a fault of the staff, not the film), this was a very enjoyable experience. Sure, the Nemesis looked like a pro-wrestler in a very well-made monster suit, and sure the ending was a little extended and cheesy, but it worked for me. It was a playstation game on the big screen, with a budget. Groovy.

The Man With Two Brains is one of my favourite silly Steve Martin films. Watching it again, I was impressed by the level of glee present in the film. It was a very gleeful experience, of a kind I haven't often seen lately. Very silly, occasionally very dodgy, but all done with a certain amount of panache. Lots of fun.

NIEA Under 7 is quite odd so far. We have only watched the first few episodes, but there has already been quite a bit of variety in tone, style, and general level of madness. My favourite bit so far is a character achieving "new levels of burning!" in a climactic boiler room scene. The manic pyromania was very cool - if he'd only said "a new level of burnination!" it would have been perfect.

Greg the Bunny is back on TV3, at midnight on Tuesdays blah. I think it started last week, which is a shame, as I'd love to get the whole series on tape blah. Silly puppet action, with Seth Green and the actor who plays the father in the American Pie films, blah. And Count Blah, the Transylvanian styles puppet who ends every sentence with blah.

The joys of Write-on Worksheets

Sometimes I quite like my classes. With the right 3 students away, with a write-on worksheet to start the lesson, and with one or two students actually showing some desire to learn, teaching can be quite enjoyable.
Of course, I still had to keep 4 kids in at interval to make them write lines.

"I will not throw things in class."
"I will watch my language in class."
"I will do my best to work well in groups."
"I will not be mean."

This afternoon I have the joy of going over the Y11 exam with one of my classes. This involves giving them back their marks, which will not be encouraging for a few of them. I shall be doing my best to convince them that they nearly passed, and that if they work hard for the next 10 lessons they might build up the skills they need to achieve some standards.

More importantly, I plan to squeeze in some drawing time before lunch, so I can use the scanner at lunch time and provide colouring-in fodder for the week. w00t!

Crazy Weekend Goodness

Ah, the happy sound of a Matt who is not at work. The sun is shining, it's Sunday, and I have a whole day ahead of me to do chores and marking and lesson preparation.
I'm pretty sure I'll be able to squeeze some shopping and anime watching in there too :)

Yesterday was muchos fun! We got up a little late, had breakfast and did some laundry, then headed South to visit parents. Debbie went and saw her horse, and I once again did battle with the sewing machine. Another robe - this one made from black cheesecloth. I think I used about 4 metres in the end, which at a dollar a metre makes for a pretty cheap robe! I made one significant change to the 'pattern' I used for the Darth Bean bright green curtain robe I made a couple of weeks ago - I inserted small panels into the join between the shoulder and the collar front type bit, to make the shoulders sit better. It was pretty successful, and I'm pleased with the final product. It's a bit ragged looking as I didn't hem any of it, but it does the job OK.





In the afternoon we visited L&S for boardgaming fun, a glass or 2 of wine, and pre-party gossip. A very relaxing way to spend the afternoon, something we're keen to do again (next week maybe?).

Jenni's party was fun - lots of people in cool costumes, delicious food, and all manner of presents for Jenni. Debbie and I had heard Jenni mention the Storyteller series as being on her DVD-wishlist a few months ago, and had subsequently found it on a Canadian website. So we got her that, plus a t-shirt that we made. Debbie instructed me as to what to draw (based off a couple of different pictures from a Newtype magazine (this kind of face, with maybe this kind of posture, and stripy socks!). I then scanned the image at work, and Debbie colourised it. Colourising on the computer is way too much fun! I'm going to be drawing some more pictures for Debbie to colourise because the result was awesome!





I've also seen 2 movies so far this weekend (one on DVD and one at explode-your-eardrums-with-ridiculous-volume Readings), which I might write about soon. All-in-all, this has been a fantastic weekend so far, and Sunday looks like it's going to be hella-cool too.

A Mountain of Paperwork

Prizegiving - ugh. I am one of 2 'office monkeys' for the prizegiving committee, because apparently I have computer skills, and too much free time. So far it mostly involves giant, painful amounts of paperwork. Still, I will get to go shopping instead of teaching a class some time next week, and will have some time off classes to help set things up on the day (and the day before), so it's not all bad. And I'm being seen to be doing something other than loafing around and blogging, so that can't be bad.
On a more neanderthallic note, the caveman game went well last night. I ended up leaving out a couple of Debbie's suggestions, not by design, but rather because I hadn't written them down. It's a strange thing - when I run my own games, I tend to stick pretty closely to what I've written down, as if I were running someone else's scenario. In large part this is because my memory is not fantastic, so something I wrote 3 or 4 months ago is as familiar to me as something I read a week ago. I have, upon occasion, come across something I wrote a few years ago and not recognised it, until I got to the end and saw my name.

So anyways, there are a few changes to be made, some of them big, some small. The game was fine fun yesterday - with improvements, it should be pretty good, and fairly robust.

One more class, 50 more forms to process, then the weekend! w00t!

Me hide behind tiger, you smash mammoth with club!

Tonight I shall be running caveperson madness for my Thursday roleplaying group. It is a game I've been working on for a while, writing up slowly over the course of the year. A couple of days ago I talked about it with Debbie, and as usual she had some awesome suggestions for ways to take a somewhat pedestrian idea, and make it awesome.
I'm not sure exactly how many of those ideas I'm going to incorporate - I shall guage the reaction/energy levels of the group, and run with what serves us best. Should be fun.

Of course, with all the cool new ideas comes a bunch of extra write-up time, but it's well worth it ;)

Exam Gems (100th Post)

Marking exams is not a fun activity. With assistance from Debz, I managed to wade through the 200+ essays, and the 50 short answer papers, and I’m done! Hooray! One of the few consolations of marking English exams is that teenagers doing their best to express themselves often make mistakes – and by random chance, some of those mistakes are pretty funny. For example:
From the story Thinking of Bagheera, there is a reference to the narrator being able to whistle to get his cat to come running. The narrator does not say:

‘I was a royalty I often abused’

as one of my students thought. ‘It was a loyalty I often abused’ is a lot closer.

Spelling is a challenge too:

‘She is instrugle with him’
‘rapedatation’ or ‘reption’ or ‘repourtition’

And finally a rarity, a student with an impressive grasp on the English language:

‘These ideas are paramount and central to the stories in which they are respective to and dictate how the actions occur.’

Not perfect, but impressive nonetheless for a 16 year old!

Matty Junior

At school, I tend to draw a fair amount. During staff briefing I often draw on the back of my copy of the notices, and I draw during form time and lunch-eating (when I'm not chasing students for notes, or nagging them to pick up their rubbish). I started learning to draw anime style last term, and drew a series of anime heads on the back of the notices for a couple of weeks.
One of the boys in my form class (who sits at the front by my desk) started quietly taking the notices after I'd read them to the class each morning, and drawing bodies on the heads. He did it every day for a couple of weeks, and it was pretty cool. It kept him quiet and occupied, and I like the idea of kids developing their aristic skills. So last week on Monday I drew a head with no body, which Matt Jnr (it is cool that his name happens to be Matt) added a body to. On Wednesday, for a change, I decided to draw a body without a head. Sure enough, Matt filled in the blank - with a slightly improved version of the head from Monday!





Today he produced a drawing of his own (I was too busy to draw before school), and it was a pretty good anime profile drawing. Maybe I'll start training him up to be a comic artist some day...

Further musings on student fashion

Once again, I was trapped in a quiet exam room with a number of students. Once again, I found myself needing to do something to prevent me from falling asleep. Once again, I roamed the exam counting students with sideburns.
To recap: Y11 exam, 79 male students, 5 had sideburns.

Y13 Exam (seventh form), a mere 19 male students, and 6 had sideburns. Does this mean that it’s a fashion trend that’s catching on with the older crowd faster than the young, or does it simply mean that most 15-16 year old boys are incapable of growing sideburns? I know I started shaving around 4th form (though I should have started earlier). Hmmm, a mystery to ponder indeed…

Seventies hairstyles seem to be taking off too (around these parts anyways). Hair combed over ears, the occasional budding mullet, shaggy hair for boys - I've mostly noticed bad 70's hair on boys so far.

The hours just fly by when you're supervising an exam.

I'm out, and I'm gorn...

I seem to have a Beastie Boys song playing in my head. Nice. Of course, how exactly to spell the word gone to convey the pronunciation is a tricky issue. Is gorn better than gawn or indeed goarn? I suspect that I will make do... Of course, gorn has the advantage of being a Star Trek race:

And a mighty cool looking one it is :)

I am now half way through the mountain of essays I collected on Monday. This is a little sad, as I'd much rather be all-the-way through, or any amount more than half. Stll, progress has been made. Somewhere in the vicinity of 100 essays now have grades and comments written on them.

Last night saw the end of Season Two of Luke's excellent Exalted game. We had our wayward Aselsi back, and it was a character intensive session, getting hooked back into all the madness that was happening at the beginning of the season, starting to experience some of the consequences of our deeds. A great deal of fun, and a fitting end to the season, and to the weekday roleplaying of this hectic week. Not having to drive anywhere, as the game came to us, was also greatly appreciated.

After a long week, I am now pretty brain-fried, and find that whilst I can sit in front of marking, and force my eyes to look at it, I can't concentrate long enough to read a whole essay, let alone assess it. Hence, I shall throw in the towel, get away from this place, and (sadly) take some of the marking home over the weekend. I didn't want to have to take any work home, but as the deadline for marking is Monday, it doesn't look like I have a choice.

More gaming to look forward to tomorrow, and 2 chances to sleep in. Plus, the third episode in the new HHGG series. And chillin' in my crib! w00t!

More Photos!

The Armageddon site site has been updated, and there's even a cosplay photo which includes me! It's from the prizegiving bit, so it includes everyone. Rachael looks a little surprised to have won :)


Now if I could just find someone with a video of the skit - I'd love to see what it looked like.

In unrelated news, WARGs quiz night was much fun, though we came 4th out of 6 teams. The team that was ahead of us beat us by half a point - dammit! Very enjoyable, with large amounts of abuse of the quiz-master (who shall remain nameless). Some very, very rude comments were made, a window was broken, and at least one person ended the night bleeding.

A very successful evening.

Genre knowledge advantageous, not required

Last night Debbie and I had the good fortune to play in a Jane Austen RPG, run by Jenni. Debbie was cast as the dashing but terse Mr Darcy, whilst I played the strong-willed country cousin Alice. The game was hilarious, and very in keeping with the tone of the source material. At times it perhaps borrowed from the Red Dwarf parody of Austen, but it was screamingly funny, and terribly erudite and witty.
Highlights included:
*An evil, evil Svend. I never knew he could be so bitchy.
*A ridiculously excited and delightfully inappropriate Lily.
*A double wedding to end the game.
*Dice rolls for manners that totally served the game well. Jenni must have rigged the dice for maximum drama.
*Twisties. It's a while since I last had them, and they were great.

Tonight is WARGs quiz night, tomorrow Exalted, and then... THE WEEKEND!

Yes, I am very excited about the weekend. There's nothing like going back to work to make you really want it to be Saturday.

Once More Unto the Breach

Exam supervision. One of the more tedious forms of slow torture this term is inflicting on me. At least I'm in a classroom today, so I'll have a desk, and if the kids are nice I might even get some marking done. Of course, I shall probably have to spend the hour marching up and down and frowning at people - especially as it's the end of the exam, when most of them have finished, and are incredibly bored but not allowed to leave.
Yesterday, supervising the English exam in the Auditorium, was especially painful. 200 kids, many of them already exhausted, all crammed into a big hall for 3 hours. To keep from being driven mad, I decided to prowl about spotting kids with sideburns. Of the 79 male students in the hall, only 5 had sideburns. Whether this is because 15-16 year old boys don't appreciate sideburns, or they can't grow them, I don't know.

One student built a fort out of his colouring pencils, complete with a flagpole with a little flag blue-tacked to it. Many students tried to go to sleep. None of them were caught using their cellphones, so all in all they were pretty well behaved.

Four more hours of exam supervision to go this week. And of course, the marking. 200 essays, 50 short answer papers. So far I've marked 12 essays. Oh, and I should be receiving an extra 25 research projects to mark this week too.

The holidays really are over. Still, lots of fun planned this week - Jane Austen roleplaying, quiz night, Exalted, and then... the weekend!

Here we go again...

Going back to school makes me a sad panda. Any Sunday night has a certain amount of 'damn, the weekend's over'ness to it, but the Sunday at the end of the holidays is particularly bad - especially if you're spending it doing marking which you really should have done in the first week of the holidays.
Then again, it's term 4, which means it's nearly the end of the year. It will be good to get back into the routine of teaching, and it will feel like quite an achievement to reach the end of my first year of teaching. Just one short term to go...

Now I must decide whether there's time to watch a movie (which wouldn't finish until about 11:30pm, so would probably not be a good idea), an episode of Kindred: The Embraced (which is under an hour, and thus would finish before 11pm), or an episode of Angelic Layer, which would be silly and upbeat and fun, and would be finished within 25 minutes of starting, maybe leaving time for a 20 minute walk before bedtime.

Such an important decision! Whatever shall I do?

Impromptu

We watched the film Impromptu last night, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had much lust for costumes, and enjoyed the romcomness of it, as well as the bending of gender roles. Having a tough leading lady persue a delicate, reluctant leading man was a refreshing take on the whole romantic movie thing. As is usually the case with historical movies, it made me very curious about its veracity, and acutely aware of my own ignorance of both history and general knowledge.
But it was fun!

Road Trip, Gamage and Theft

Hmmm, a strange day in retrospect. We had visitors in the morning (and thus did an hour or two of tidying when we got up, producing a clean and tidy lounge and a less scruffy deck), then travelled up to PN to visit M&D. We played Pirates' Cove, ate yummy thai food, and played The Miller's Children, a Little Fears scenario.
The game was excellent, very spooky at times, with a really good fairy-tale feel. We LARPed a little of it, turning out the lights and creeping around the very dark house during a blackout scene. That was spooky. Then we finished the game by candlelight, as our characters were carrying candles around. Very nice.

Sadly, when we went to leave (at around 11:30pm), we discovered that our car had been broken into. The driver's side lock had been forced, and the key no longer works. You can lock and unlock it from inside the car, but can't turn the key in the lock any more. The theivey types had stolen a discman, a cd wallet with about 12 CDs in it (mostly copies and compilations burned onto blank CDs, so not too expensive, but quite inconvenient), Debbie's sunglasses, and the lovely goods we'd purchased from Lindale on the way up :(

The lovely goods were 2 delicious bottles of wine, and a cool wine-bottle holder that was destined to be a birthday present.

As far as we know, that's all that was stolen. Thankfully, my Mum's jeans, which I had put in the car just this afternoon to be mailed, were not stolen. They are no closer to being mailed, but they weren't nicked :)

A bit of a dampner on the evening, but it could have been much worse. It's unlikely to cost us much, no windows were broken, and the car itself sustained only minor lock-injuries.

So, all in all, a pretty good day. Just a shame about the wayward behaviour of some selfish person(s) at the end of it.

Little Fears was great though - and if I ask nicely, I should be able to read through it, as it was an SDC entry. w00t!

New Hitchhiker's

It's out, and it's good. Very funny. I've been listening to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy regularly for many years, and it is fantastic to have some new episodes to listen to. I had almost forgotten that they are laugh-out-loud funny (I tend not to laugh on the 10th, 20th or 30th listening, even though they're still great). Each episode is available as an on-demand realplayer file for 7 days after the Thursday night repeat. This means you have until 11pm Thursday Britain time (10am Friday here in NZ) to listen to the first episode, then it'll update to the second, and so on.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/

w00t! Next up, the movie and the 4th and 5th phases!

Busy busy busy and girls...

Whew, these holidays sure have been action packed. Today is the first quiet day we've had in a long time. The holidays started with a bang, with awesome InSpectres on Friday. Then there was a cultural evening of foreign food and foreign films at Aslan and Shiva's house on Saturday. Then there was much tidying up, and pirate snacks and a slide show of Norm's trip to the USA on Sunday. Monday was quiet.
On Tuesday we drove down to Debbie's parents' place for costume sewing, with the cat in her cat-box on the back seat. She talked a lot, and didn't seem too thrilled by the trip, but was fine once we arrived. We stayed the night at Debbie's parents' house, then were very kindly driven to the airport by Debbie's mum at 5:30 in the morning. Onto a plane, and down to Christchurch we went!

Back on Thursday night, very late as the plane had been delayed in Queenstown. We decided to drive home straight away, even though it was late. We arrived home around midnight, with the cat slightly less disgruntled about being in the car, and quite relaxed and happy about being home. She seems to travel pretty well between here and her old home, which will make future travels much easier, as long as Debbie’s folks don’t mind babysitting our cat.

Friday saw us down at Debbie’s folks’ place again, sewing and seeing to horses, then going out for delicious Japanese food with cosplayers and con attendees. Then we went to the girlflat + svend and sang Singstar. It was huge fun.

Saturday – more sewing (we made the costume in small bursts of activity, and I was making a green robe as well, which I made adjustments to), then partying in celebration of Svend’s 31st birthday. It was cool! We stayed until about 1 or 1:30, then meandered back up the coast. I cooked chicken when I got home as I was way too hungry, so ended up staying up until 3am.

Sunday – Armageddon Cosplay day! More details in the next post, but we had to get up early, do last minute costume stuff, and get to Armageddon. I was hungover, which was less than cool. Everything went well, and we won. Yay!

Matt learns all about Cosolay The Conceptual Phase

The Conceptual Phase
So, Jenni and Giffy asked us a few months ago whether we’d be keen to cosplay at Armageddon. We both said yes, since it sounded like fun, we both like costumes, and we thought we might be able to convince people with actual sewing skills to make cool costumes for us, which we could then keep.

I really do like cool costumes.



Things were quiet on the cosplay front until about 2 months ago. Giffy informed us that there was a secret, awesome costume idea that she was going to tell us about. It turned out to be TEEN GIRL SQUAD. Not what we’d been expecting, but cool. I considered making a Strongbad costume, but lacking the know-how or the make-do, I decided just to do voices for the skit instead.

A couple of weeks ago we had a cosplay meeting, where we discussed ideas for costumes. It was pretty simple really – get stiff white fabric, and make the costumes look as flat as possible. People were to create their own accessories, however they saw fit. We toodled off to Spotlight, and bought 7 metres of curtain backing type material. I was also strongly tempted by some of the teddy-bear print cotton and polar fleece, and by therma-drape curtain material, which was hella-cheap. This turned out to be for the best, as I returned a couple of weeks later, and bought curtain material ($2 a metre), pirate print material for bandanas ($15.50 a metre), and 12 metres of black cheesecloth at a dollar a metre. Some of this fabric turned out to be very useful…

Making the Costumes

Over the last week or so, we started making costumes. Debbie’s mother’s sewing machine saw a lot of use, and was privy to more than one rude word uttered by me when I made mistakes. Debbie sewed a simple A-frame dress, and did a very neat job of it. Unfortunately, when she tried it on, it was just a little too tight. I had drawn the pattern on, based on Debbie’s shape plus some room to account for 3-Dness. Not enough room, as it turned out – probably about 2 sizes too small? And with no zip, that made it kinda impossible to get in and out of.

Never fear, gentle reader, for a solution was at hand. Therma-drape curtain material to the rescue! Not the exciting green stuff I’d bought the week before, but rather some material we bought last year, to use as a screen, or a backdrop for photos, or whatever. We made a new, bigger dress, and it was way better. In fact, it was too big, and we had to redo a couple of the hems, but that was cool, and way more possible than biggifying a dress you’ve already cut the fabric for.


We got the dress made, but didn’t have gloves, hair, or a black top to go underneath. Shopping on Saturday took care of the top, and Sunday morning (after emergency burgers to fight off the worst effects of drinking the night before) we got hair-making supplies and gloves.

We arrived at Jenni’s at around 12, only an hour late. Lee and Svend put their awesome wool wrangling skills at our disposal, and Lee constructed ponytails for Debbie. Meanwhile, I made the magazine, and drew on the front of Debbie’s dress. With the hair complete, next step was makeup. White face paint, black lips, and eye-liner had the team looking like scary Japanese horror characters, or mental-patient mimes, or a crazy 80s band. It was awesome. I refrained from wearing makeup, as I was not in costume. In retrospect, I think this was a wise decision.





The Convention

We were dropped off by valiant driver types (the aforementioned wool wranglers), and got to wander around Armageddon for an hour or so before the competition. My stomach was sore, but there was lots of shiny stuff around to distract me. DVDs wanted me to buy them, as did magazines and swords and comics. I bought drinks instead – powerade and coke, to keep me functioning.

I took a few photos of the Squad wandering around at the convention – it was cool seeing them next to regular people. The best reaction they got was from the NZ comics table, who recognised them instantly, took photos, and wished them luck for the competition. Later, the people at the Squirt table were also excited when they saw my Stinkoman t-shirt, and one guy literally jumped out of his seat when I told him that there was a group cosplaying TGS. He had his photo taken with them – it was way cool.



The Judging

At 2pm, we went into the anime screening room for the judging. They tried to stop me coming in, as I wasn’t in costume, but a quick word about the skit, and that was all sorted out. It was a little strange at first, being one of the few people in the room (security, judges, me) who wasn’t in costume. There were quite a few people there (30ish?), in a variety of costumes. Some were pretty amazingly made (Michaela’s Eowyn costume being the most impressive for me), and some that were hilarious (the crazy Cactus was probably the funniest). It was a nice vibe in the room – lots of people who’d gone to the effort of making costumes, and were hanging out being excited. Very supportive, and lots of people recognised each other from previous cosplays, so there was a reunion feel too.

Each person’s name was called, they went up to the front and introduced themselves to the judges. They had to say who they were, and give a little info about their costumes. If they had a skit, they performed, and then they got a number on their hand (the order for the on-stage parade thingy), and had their photo taken. Some people sang songs, others acted out skits, some just introduced themselves and did a twirl. At first, the judges (mainly the Uber-judge, Zeb) asked a question or 2, such as “what was the hardest part of the costume” or “tell me about _____”, but as time grew short, the questions stopped.

We were up twelfth. The Squad introduced themselves in character, in TGS voices, which was hilarious. They gave useful information about their costumes, such as:
Puggle (The Ugly One): My dress has pipe-cleaners!
Giffy (Whatserface): I’m wearing pants!
Jenni (So-and-so): My hair is pantyhose!
Debz (Cheerleader): My hair is wool…

Then it was time for the skit. We had rehearsed that morning, but the room was hella-stuffy, I was hung over, and a little nervous. I took a deep breath, and began the script. All the Squad did an excellent job with the physical acting, my voice sounded OK (but echoed in the small room, making me wonder if I was super-loud), and the other cosplayers laughed like crazy. We got our number, and I mentioned as the girls were getting their photo taken that the TGS were drawn and voiced by one character from homestarrunner, which was why I was doing all the voices. At least one of the judges knew what TGS was, which was something of a relief.

The judging took about an hour and a half all up, and the room was stiflingly hot. I began to feel very seedy indeed, which was a worry. In future, I think it will be a bad idea to stay up drinking and cooking chicken and watching Black Books until 3am the night before Cosplay.

There was a brief break between the judging and going on stage, in which we went to the bafroom (2 bafrooms?), met the aforementioned guy from Squirt, and breathed in some more oxygenated air. It was a huge relief to be getting back towards regular temperature, and my seediness abated for a while.



On Stage


Then we lined up beside the stage, and prepared for our big moment. There was a pretty decent sized crowd, with some people we knew in the front row, which was very cool. I started getting nervous (What if my voice goes? What if the microphone feeds back like crazy? What if I pass out from heat exhaustion, or my stomach lining attempts to escape!), but it was pretty much OK. I figure if I hadn’t been hungover, it wouldn’t have been so bad. As it was, it was bearable.




Once on stage, I grabbed the mic, and took a deep breath. As soon as I started talking, 90% of my nervousness evaporated. I love microphones and PAs, and it was cool that I was able to be loud enough to be heard by most, if not all, of the audience. Apologies to Jenni for any hearing damage – she was standing right next to a speaker when I started. The script was very simple, and it was about the 5th time we’d done it, so I was pretty confident about the timing. The cool thing was that everyone’s performance came up a notch on stage, with hilarious physical acting to accompany the dialogue. This made my job easy, as I could watch their moves and time the dialogue to their actions. I also enjoyed the fact that I had to leave a pause after everyone was on stage for the applause to die down. Applause is great.

The on-stage performance was definitely the best, in all ways. It was the most fun, the most rewarding as we had instant feedback by way of laughter and applause, and it was the best executed. I was well impressed by the performances of the Squad. If I could see a video of what it looked like from the front, that would be excellent – once again it was a performance I only got to see from the back.




After we performed our skit, we lined up with everyone else and grinned and applauded others. It was way cool seeing all the people we’d been hanging out with for the past couple of hours getting their props from the audience. It made me very happy.

Then we piled onto the stage, another slightly awkward moment for me as I wasn’t in a costume, and thus felt like I was somehow spoiling the image. I decided to sit on the edge of the stage in one corner, as a compromise. When they announced the winners, there was one name that was read out wrong. There was a pause where we all went – who’s that? Then the penny dropped, and much happiness ensued. None of us were expecting to even get close to winning, but we were damn happy to do so. We checked with Zeb afterwards, to find out how we’d won (and make sure that it was really us who’d won), and it was all on the up and up. Awesome.

All in all, a hugely rewarding experience, even if you take out the winning part. It was fun, and had a great energy and vibe, and it was silly, and it was SOOOO GOOD!

My thanks to all for their awesomeness ;)

Cosplay Champions!

Debbie, Jenni, Margee and Giffy cosplayed as Teen Girl Squad at Armageddon today, and they won!
I did the voices for the skit, which was hella-tight. It was mad fun, and we got cash-money for a prize! We turned it into magazines, DVDs and pizza pretty promptly, but yay! SOOOOO GOOD!

The posts are few and far between...

The holidays have begun, and they look to be busy. As such, updates shan't be frequent over the next two weeks.
Last day of term
Lots of fun, strangely. Mainly because Debbie made an excellent pirate language word-find, with instructions on 'how to be speaking like a pirate' on it. I gave it to both of my year 11 classes, and had only 2 students opt not to do it. Most of them were very keen and very happy to seek pirate word-booty in the jumble of letters. And we had snacks in my afternoon class - chocolate biscuits and so on. Very nice way to end the term.

Friday night's all right for InSpectres
Huzzah! Svend ran InSpectres for us with almost no warning. Hooray! There were former Dunedin and current Dunedin types there, and the motley crew of characters we assembled was most excellent. I played a former hairdresser with a massive quiff called 'Sergio' (the character was called Sergio, not the quiff). Debbie played an ex-History teacher (a-la-The-Wave), Giffy played a high school drop-out toaster repair-person, and the two gentlemen J's played a manly fireman and a fearless builder. We solved the mystery of The Laundry That Ate A Dog, and had a hilarious time doing so. We also drank delicious fruit wines. Mmmmm, fruit wines.

The Saturday that Matt Forgot
Ummm, yeah. We went down to visit Debbie's family? I bought fabric from Spotlight, and started to sew the worst cloak ever? Seriously, I didn't use a pattern, and the only scissors I could find were nail-scissors, so I cut out all the fabric with a craft knife. And I sew like an arthritic monkey on a 3 day booze-up. The cloak is not yet finished, but progress is surprisingly good, all things considered. This still means it is likely to end up as an abomination of a piece of clothing. After that…

Oh. I remember now. My brain had tried to block it out. Poutine.

Poutine is a traditional French-Canadian meal, consisting of french fries (cooked in lard), gravy, cheese, and whatever else you throw on top (such as bacon and sausage, or chicken and peas). L&S made us giant plates of Poutine, which we then attempted to eat. It was delicious - like a whole roast meal, all thrown into the same bowl, with crazy amounts of gravy. The quantity, in true poutine style, was enormous. My stomach flinches even now when I think of it. Fantastic, but so… heavy…

We then watched Tokyo Godfathers, which was very weird, but very good.

Arrrr Mateys, Sunday it be!
Pirate shenanigans be planned for Sunday, and some be happening. Visitors we had, and much booty be placed on the table. Cupcakes, arrr, and munchables of many kinds. People be visiting, and talk of travels overseas be had. Later, as the sun be sinking beneath the watery horizon, Harsh Realm be watched, and a slideshow of Norman’s trip to America be seen. Arr, ‘twas a fine day, though pirate content be lighter than planned.

After guests be leaving, Revenger’s Tragedy be watched. A fine film, based on a Middleton play, directed by Alex Cox it be. Eddie Izzard be glorious as Lussorioso, and Chris Eccleston be most sinister as the revenger. Language be mostly Middleton’s, with the occasional line of modern dialogue thrown in. Visually sumptuous, musically excellent (soundtrack by Morcheeba), and very, very cool. Arrrr!

The week of not-work, number one
This week looks busy. Costumes need to be sewn and scripts written for Armageddon. We’ll be in Christchurch on Wednesday and Thursday (hooray!). We have a fair amount of work to do around the house, and work for school. We will be kept busy, but not nearly as relentlessly busy as we are during the term. We went out for a walk in the glorious sunshine yesterday, and even managed to read for a while in the afternoon – a rare and excellent pleasure. I finished A Wizard of Earthsea, and started a book by Roger Zelazny – Lord of Light. A strange opening, refreshingly different. Debbie and I are hoping to get a goodly amount of reading done this holidays, as well as some writing. It would be excellent to get at least 2 Kapcon SDC entries finished this holidays - I'm 80% through one, and about 50% through 2 others, so it's possible. I shall have to tear myself away from the projector to get it done, so it will be tough...

Aaarrrhhhh! Avast, 'tis the end of term mateys

Thank god, it's over. The winter terms have been and gone, and happy holidays are here. Two weeks of nice sleeping in, and resting, and not teaching kids. I expect I may even get some planning done this holidays, though I did bring home a certain distraction device - namely a projector. Work seems way more boring than, well, just about all of the alternatives :)
Debbie the magnificent made a pirate-talk wordfind last night, and appended it with a short (borrowed) guide on 'how to be talking like a pirate'. I had intended to give it to my Y9's first period (and thus irritate all their other teachers for the rest of the day), but they were cocky and demanded to play games and not do work. So I made them work instead, just to prove that being pushy and impolite doesn't always get you what you want.

This left me with 2 class sets of the wordfind (due to a running-out-of-paper, pretending-not-to-be-finished, then making-2-class-sets incident with the risograph copier). And 2 Year 11 classes. So we did some exam revision, checked to see if anyone had any questions, then I gave them a wordfind. Some of them were very happy about it, and it produced an excellent working quiet (not actual silence, but pretty quiet and what noise there was was work related).

And in the afternoon I let my kids play Cow and Dig, and we ate cookies. It was very... educational. I told them to pretend to be doing English work if the principal came in - they giggled about that.

And now it's the holidays. Awesome. After a few solid days of sleep, I hope to be back up to regular human type functioning. And I get to spend the whole time with Debbie, since we have the same job! I knew we went into teaching for a reason!

Reports, Debates and Lunch

It has been an interesting day so far. It started nicely, with a non-contact first period. A nice opportunity to catch my breath, get a bit of marking done, and make sure I was sorted for the day. It also turned out to be an opportunity for me to wander over to the main office and sign Appendix 2 of the English HOD's report. I'd talked about how cool it would be to get home theatre + projector set-ups for watching movies, and had demonstrated the fun of using the projector to the HOD. She asked for a proposal in writing to go into her end-of-year report, and I had to sign the bottom of the bit I wrote. Very nice. I will be surprised if it all goes ahead, but it will be a very pleasant kind of surprised.
After interval my class participated in round 2 of the interclass debates. They did OK - not as well as in round one - and lost by a narrow margin. Most of the kiddies were nice about it, but one or two got a little silly. I had to give them a stern word or two at the end of the period.

Sadly, I realised about 5 minutes after I arrived at school that I'd left my lunch at home. Fortunately, I had the period after lunch free, so was able to go home and visit the cat, and pick up my lunch. Now only 4 lessons stand between me and the holidays. It feels like 4 too many. I am on the horns of a dilemma - do I give my students quiet-make-busy work, which will result in lots of marking for me over the holidays, or do I give them noisy group work, which will yield very little actual output and thus, no marking. Hmmm, migraine or marking? A tough choice...

Friendship Books

A fairly popular phenomenon with the youngsters these days, I see increasing numbers of students passing around hardcover books, into which their friends write their details, a short letter to the owner, and add whatever else they see fit.
I got fairly sick of seeing them at the start of the term, as kids would spend whole periods furtively writing in them, with much more gusto than they'd ever apply to a lesson. I confiscated one four weeks ago, and the poor kid won't get it back until the end of this week. Still, it meant I didn't have to look at it, so I'm happy.

Then on Friday, one of my Y11 students approached me at the end of class. He passed me a book and asked me to draw him a picture. It wasn't until I opened it after class that I realised that it was his Friendship book. Needless to say, I was very flattered. He's a very nice kid, has played some of our card games in class, and liked the artwork. The drawing I did ended up being pretty weird - a humanoid bird (in a shirt and tie) with a briefcase full of beak cleaning brushes, a dog with a monacle and a pipe, and a student having his brain sucked out by aliens. Maybe I shouldn't have drawn it during period 5 on a hot Friday...

Anyways, today I confiscated a book from another student in the same class. I gave it back after class, with a stern warning, and she gave it back to me and asked me to sign it. I'm sure it's not helping my 'stern, serious teacher' stock to agree, but my 'crazy English teacher' stocks are going through the roof!

I even had a random kid from another class point through the window in my door and say "that teacher's crazy" during a class yesterday. I have no idea why.

Great Weekend

Just wrote a lengthy post about the coolness of the weekend, in much detail, which Blogger decided to eat. The annoying thing is, it ate the post whilst I was in the process of copying it, just in case it got eaten. Sigh...
In short:
* Cranium is a great game. Jenni and I made a very good team. I like to sculpt T-Rexs. I want to play as Debbie's partner next time.
*Svend cooks nice food.
*Singstar is fun, though I still can't get a good score for Ace of Spades, no matter how loud I sing it.
*Marking is painful, but goes a lot faster with 2 people.
*The Henry the 8th mini-series was very cool, creepy, and informative, as I know next to nothing about anything.

Imagine this post was written in a more interesting style, maybe with witticisms. While you're at it, why not imagine that there's a photo of the purple T-Rex I sculpted. It was awesome, incredibly lifelike, only about 10cm tall.

Good Vibes

I'm pretty happy right now. A number of pleasant events are converging to make me a happy Matt. The sun is shining, the week is mostly done, and I actually feel like I'm doing a good job at school. I have a relaxing afternoon with only one lesson, and that's in the computer lab. The weekend is looming, and is likely to contain costume sillyness, maybe some delicious alcoholic beverages, and time with my wonderful Debz.
Ahhh, the sigh of a happy man.

A couple of things have contributed to my 'not feeling terribly hopeless at my job' sentiments. My junior classes performed admirably in the interclass debates - one class lost, the other won. The important thing was that neither class embarrassed me, by being unprepared or by being a poor audience. I was a little worried about that.

Secondly, my observed lesson went OK, and the 2 minute version of the feedback (I'm getting the full version tomorrow) was positive.

Add to this roleplaying tonight (w00t!), the arrival of Harsh Realm on DVD in the mail, and the proximity of the holi-holi-holidays, and smiles are inevitable.

PS: Stay tuned for the inevitable lesson from hell which destroys all this genki. Will it be a fistfight in the computer lab which destroys thousands of dollars worth of chairs (the PCs are probably very cheap to replace, cheaper than furniture)? Will it be a secret hidden piece of paperwork which I've missed, which prevents me from getting a pay rise? Will it be an attack of rabid year 9 metal tech students, with sharply lathed spears and crude shields? Who knows, only time will tell...

Helicopters, lesson observations and cheese

The computer network was down yesterday, so this is a delayed post...
The amount of noise that 6 low-flying helicopters make is rather impressive. On my way from the admin block to the English department today, I saw a group of helicopters flying over the school. There were 2 black, then 2 white, then 2 more black choppers. It looked like the black helicopters were acting as escort for the 2 white helicopters. It was interesting that I could hear the thumping of the chopper blades, and feel the disturbance in the air, before I could actually see them. By the time they were over the school, the noise had changed to a less bassy thrum, and the air disturbance seemed less. Very interesting, and fairly mesmerising too – I stopped and watched them fly past, and couldn’t help but think about how incredibly freaky it must be to be on the ground and hear that sound, knowing that the helicopters are coming to kill people. Makes Apocalypse Now seem all the more terrifying, let alone real life war type situations.

I had an observed lesson today, which I was kind of expecting. “Some time this week,” was as specific as my observer had been, but from looking at his timetable and mine I’d guessed that today was quite likely. In the end it was a different person who came in, so I shall probably have another observed lesson later in the week. Yay. I so love having someone come into the class with the specific purpose of critiquing my teaching. The kids were pretty good though, for which I am grateful. They were my nicer Year 9 class, and they behaved very well for them. Not that I’d get in trouble for having a poorly disciplined class, but I’d feel stink about it.

I’d sent 3 kids to the library to prepare for a debate, and they came back at interval to report on their progress. It was very nice of them to do so – I hadn’t asked them to, and it was their own time they were using up. They have done some excellent preparation, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they’ve prepared for the Affirmative, when they should be arguing the negative. Eep. The debate is on tomorrow, so they shall have to do some work tonight. I’ll try to get a note to them during period 3, let them know the error of their ways. One of the crazy things they’ve done is a very, very wide definition of children. It includes cheese. I’m not really sure of the link, but they are quite excited about their definition. I’m quite glad that they have to change to the negative (as my initial note specified), as they won’t be able to use this silly definition. Cheese…

Random pointless bribery

I'm about to head off to 2 different Pizza Hutt stores, to pick up food for my form class and a colleague's soccer team. My form class are a charming bunch of Y10 students, whom I only see for 25 minutes a day, most of which time they're chatting to each other or stuffing their gobs. I only agreed to a pizza day on the condition that one of them organised it - I'm happy to drive down and pick them up, but wasn't about to suggest it.
The soccer team coach is also having a pizza day today, and asked if I 'd mind picking up his pizzas as he has a class before lunch. I agreed, but sadly he'd ordered from a different Pizza Hutt. It is closer to school, but was more closed at lunch time yesterday than the one I visited, hence my order being placed 2 minutes drive away. They are both in a direct line from school, so it shouldn't take me more than an extra 5 minutes to pick up the second lot.

I may need to press gang some students into helping me carry them though - I think it's 28 pizzas in all!

I will get to try a hot'n'spicy pizza with a satay swirl as a result of all this chaos, so it may prove worth it in the end ;)

Sorry, but your brain is out of service

Debbie and I had planned to go to WARGs last night, to catch up with friends, hang out, maybe play in a game. Our regular Thursday game being put on hold this week made for quite an enthusiastic Matt and Debbie. Sadly, school went on just a little too long for my brain to survive. An after-school meeting on how best to study did me in. It was quite a good session, with some very interesting material and enthusiastic presentation. The problem was my blood sugar levels, not the meeting itself.
When I was a lad, I used to have to eat glucose type supplements to stave off migraines. Well, being a skinny boy I was often given chocolate too, which did the trick. As an adult, I tend to look after myself, and have learned to recognise the start of a migraine and stave it off. For a long time, I took extreme precautionary measures, and ate bucket-loads of chocolate any time I had to do anything unpleasant like work.

I have moved on from that plan, to a more healthy one. Sadly, when you're trapped without food in an hour long meeting at the end of a long day, the best laid plans of mice and men aft gan aglay. Or something.

So I went to bed last night and had a very sore head, instead of going out and being social. Nurofen and junk food and sleep combined to overpower the headache, but I'm wary now - it might return at any time, and incapacitate me, or just make my day at work extremely miserable.

I feel the urge to pack my bag with chocolate, as an immunizing precaution...