Spell-check now recognises the verb “texted”. Who knew...?

Apathy Jack writes:

As those who follow my various livejournal posts and meltdowns in Real Life™ will know, I don’t understand social networking sites, so I don’t know what is accepted as normal and what is not...

So as I’m “talking” to someone over facebook’s chat function, my phone buzzes. The message I have just read has been texted to me by the same person. Now, this was, well, I don’t know the twenty-first century term, but it was an active chat; we were replying to one another at some speed – she didn’t think I had gone offline or anything, she just figured it was an important enough idea to relay to me simultaneously in two different media.

I think that counts as post-modernism, but I’m not really sure anymore...



And just while we’re talking about facebook, I’ve had a fair number of ex-students track me down, and I’ve dutifully added the vast majority of them because, you know, that’s how I understand the etiquette of these things to work. One of my recent additions is a girl who was in my class at a time when she was making quite large changes in her life; whose two sisters I taught; whose mother I got to know quite well over six years of teaching three daughters; of whom I still fondly remember the time we sat and ate lunch at Stage Challenge – all the others had spread out through the Aotea Centre, so we guarded the bags, ate our respective food and chatted on and off for a while. It was a pleasant interlude in an otherwise very stressful day. When I look at her facebook status and see that it reads “(student’s name) says cuddling afterwards is for bitches”, well, it just warms the heart, it does...

Three things

Apathy Jack writes:

Thing Primus

A criminal has been going into banks and supermarkets, hypnotising the cashiers, and robbing the tills while they stand there in a mesmerised stupor.

I’ve been keeping half an eye on outbreaks of the twenty-first century, but this is even better – it’s a 1970’s cartoon. Seriously, in a few days we’re going to see news reports about this guy being caught by a group of plucky pubescent adventurers or a super hero in a badly mismatched costume.


Thing Secondus

Big Bad Wolves, the short film made by local talent-repository Rajneel Singh has finally come to the internet. It is findable here. It is a very amusing, and very dark (and probably not all that work safe) retelling of Red Riding Hood, through a bunch of Tarantino-esque gangsters. Also in the link are Raj’s other works, including a couple of music videos by local artists. Of special mention is The Fanimatrix; a Matrix fan-film that was downloaded a couple of million times when it was first put on the intertubes, making it one of New Zealand’s most-watched short films. (Also, it contains RSJS being kicked in the chest – good fun for all the family.)


Thing Tertius

Scroobius Pip, in collaboration with someone or something called Yila, has got a new track, called Astronaut. Seriously, if you don’t like Scroobius Pip, I don’t think you and I can be friends. Watch:

Apathy Jack writes:

So, it turns out South Park did a concise little summary of the beliefs of Scientology which can be found here.

This is useful background when you look at the war on Scientology declared by a group calling itself Anonymous. They don’t like L Ron Hubbard’s acolytes, and initially outlined their displeasure in a public statement here. They followed that up with a statement to the members of the church, where they explained that it wasn’t personal, but needed to be done.

They called on the public to join them in protest on the tenth of February this year – protests many attended wearing Guy Fawkes masks, ala the titular character from the excellent movie (and better graphic novel) V for Vendetta. These protests happened in several countries. Here is footage from the action in England.


There are two reasons I like the twenty-first century:

Firstly; a “religion” that is right out of a science-fiction movie (or, more specifically, created by a science-fiction author) is getting uppity, so a group of mysterious underground anarchists release ominous messages over the internet calling free-thinking people to join them in public displays of freedom of speech, which leads to hundreds of masked figures making the ultimate point of not giving in to a force that would demand unquestioning obedience. That is what the twenty-first century is supposed to be like.

Secondly; I fired up the laptop school has given me, plugged it into the data projector that hangs from the ceiling of my classroom, streamed the above videos from comedycentral.com and youtube; and used them to kick-start a discussion on the broad social issues raised by V for Vendetta (which is this year’s film study), and that was that was Period 4 English for yesterday done.


And no, that isn’t proof that I’m indoctrinating my students into anarcho-socialism.

Getting them to write a response to an article entitled How To Build A Dirty Bomb last period today is proof that I’m indoctrinating my students into anarcho-socialism...