"Be Brilliant"

“Be brilliant!”

It is a small urging that is packed with yearning, affection, and (to be quite honest) inescapable sternness. It is a statement that we grew all too familiar with during our sophomore year of high school, a statement we more often than not failed to follow. It was, of course, joined by sayings like “carpe diem” which were tossed to us not-to-casually by an educator like I have never since encountered.

Ms. Susan Bank was a bastion of knowledge packed into the body of a little woman. She was fairly easy to please as long as you put forth your very best effort. Though, admittedly, I rarely put forth the effort her class deserved. She was a professor of literature and writing. She was a scholar of scholars. And she was a tenth grade honors English teacher in an Alabama public high school. She introduced us to the likes of Ayn Rand and her anthem, Henry James’s naughty turning screw, Stephen Crane and his courageous blood-stained badge, and Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s heartwarming little prince.

I was consistently staggered by the depth of her knowledge and insight. She was stern. And I’ll be the first to admit that I vituperated against her on more occasions than I care to discuss. As always though, one comes away from a learning experience with more than he or she ever realizes is possible. Either way, we always knew that her goal was to impart as much of her storehouse of knowledge and wisdom to us as she possibly could.

On Saturday, January 29, 2005, Ms. Bank passed away having fought a brief but bitter battle with cancer. I sat slumped against a cold concrete wall in Auburn, Alabama, listening to a tearful message from Jill Sturgeon, another English teacher at my high school. I sat in the bitter cold that January evening, tears streaming down my face in utter shock. I remember the stillness around me, the quiet. No sounds but my hushed sobs could be heard. The land of tears is, after all, a secret place.

Losing Ms. Bank was my first true foray into grief. Since her death I have lost several more people in my life to sickness and tragedy. The beautiful irony of those struggles is that I have always come back to The Little Prince to ease my pain. It almost feels like she took time out of our sophomore year to prepare us for the eventuality of experiencing death, though I doubt she knew it would be her own.

There is not a day that goes by that I don’t make use of some form of Ms. Bank’s teachings. Sometimes it’s simply telling myself to “be brilliant.” Other times I throw words like “boondoggle” or “cogitate” into conversation. Other evenings find me curled up on my couch with Anthem in hand. And every time I prepare to kill a cockroach I think of Metamorphosis. These were not idle lessons but living instructions, mind-expanding teachings. And I am not only a better student, but a better person because of them.

Thank you Ms. Bank.

"Selling 'Star Wars' toys 20 years ago an ill-advised financial decision"

So this is one of the funniest articles I've ever read. Please enjoy. (oh, and here's the original link)

Jeff Vrabel: Selling 'Star Wars' toys 20 years ago an ill-advised financial decision

By Jeff Vrabel

GateHouse News Service

I decided as a child many years ago that forming meaningful interpersonal relationships was not something that would ever be important to me, so I got really into "Star Wars" toys.

But turning such a developmental corner in the early 1980s meant two things: 1. My toys were the ones from the reasonably good movies, not the forehead-slappingly stupid prequels about taxation and meadow-rolling-around and that four-armed diner alien that talked like Harry Caray for some reason; and, 2. My toys were TERRIBLE in comparison with the warehousefuls of "Star Wars" junk being produced in sweatshops all across the galaxy in recent years.

I don't want to sound like sour grapes here, but seriously, the stuff we had then was basically made of particle board and held together with wadded-up Bubblicious.

For instance, I owned a TIE Fighter that, when you tried to apply decorative stickers to it, burst immediately into flame, probably due to its being coated entirely in lead paint. There was a Chewbacca action figure I owned that looked like something my dog produced the night she demolished a full 12-pack of chocolate Santas. And frankly, the lightsabers that my brother, friends and I were supposed to use were JOKES, laughable glorified PVC pipes with a few sad holes in them. They were supposed to create that swooshy sound when swung through the air, but instead produced a sad, asthmatic sort of "snuh" noise, sort of like when you catch a kitten in the Dustbuster.

And no, I'm not just saying all this because I may, hypothetically, possibly, have lingering rage about selling the entire minivan-load of "Star Wars" junk I'd collected via a series of ill-advised garage sales. I hadn’t realized that someday people who were bigger nerds and had fewer girlfriends than I could buy themselves gold-encrusted yachts selling stuff like that on eBay and/or "Star Wars" conventions. That was the first of what's turning out to be a lifetime of extremely poor financial decisions, the latest of which is my successful bid to purchase the Chicago Cubs.

None of this is the case any more, of course — the kids these days have merchandise that is FANTASTIC. My son's lightsaber, for instance, has the right sound effects, ignites in a respectable-looking fashion and makes the sweet hrnuhnhrr sound effect when swung in the air, as well as the clashing-metal noise when it hits something, such as the couch, my spine or a cup of grape juice, which resulted in Jake's learning an extremely important lesson about Jedis: I don't care which benevolent society of galaxy-protectors you belong to, you will mop up the grape juice.

Anyway, I'm mentioning this because today's children might not ever have to bother with the incredible inconvenience of picking up a lightsaber with their hands. A new toy called the Force Trainer, coming soon, consists of a headset and a 10-inch-tall training tower with a ball inside it, the idea being that the headset collects brainwaves that allow you to move the ball WITH YOUR MIND, as long as your parents don't mind you hooking up your curious little sponge-brain to an electronic device designed somewhere in George Lucas' house.

The Force Trainer is one of the first mass-market direct brain-to-computer products. Lucas Licensing president Howard Roffman told USA Today, "It's been a fantasy everyone has had, using The Force." (Note that some of our fantasies involve doing so in a way that would make Jessica Alba come by the house more, but whatever.)

It may be only the first: Mattel plans soon to introduce a game called Mind Flex that purportedly uses brainwave activity to move a ball through an obstacle course on a table top. And other companies are hoping to develop games that mean using brainwaves to do something cooler than move little spheres around, which is like the lamest thing you can do with brainwaves, people, seriously.

"Ooh, look at me, I can harness the untold and deeply mysterious power of human thought to make a ping-pong ball turn left in a mouse box; ooooohhhhh." Come ON, people. The ball thing is cute, but please, drop me an e-mail when you produce something that will let me shoot lightning out of my fingers, or, at the very least, float a beer from the fridge to the couch.

Jeff Vrabel is a freelance writer who sold a Millennium Falcon in a garage sale in 1988, but it's OK, because he couldn't have put his kid through college with that now or anything. He can be reached at jeffvrabel.com or by emailing jeff@jeffvrabel.com.

freedom and justice for all

“i have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’

i have a dream that one day on the red hills of georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

i have a dream that one day even the state of mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

i have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

tomorrow barack obama will be sworn in as president of the united states of america. tomorrow, for the first time in history, a black man will hold the highest office in our nation. tomorrow part of dr. king’s dream will be realized. i am a white man who was born and raised in the south. i am educated. i am a christian.

and i am dumbfounded by the rhetoric that still exists in my southern home of alabama. today i read the phrase, “america can quit belaboring the civil rights movement now.” i don’t even know what to do with that statement. i cannot even process it fully. is this really where we are? do we really find ourselves in this place?

sometimes i sit and process through what i know about my history. how do i fit into the story of america? i am a twenty-year-old white male from alabama. i was born and raised southern baptist. i was educated in one of the finest public school systems in the southeast. i am enrolled in a prestigious mid-sized university in tennessee. there i am pursuing degrees in music business and religious studies. i am an immigrant. and even though my family immigrated from england and germany so far back i cannot even tell you the year or the generation, i am, like almost every american, an immigrant.

over the last few years i have found myself confronted with issues of poverty, justice, race, gender, preservation of the environment, etc. i have spent time assessing my belief systems and reorganizing my positions on everything from how i like my eggs cooked to what church should look like.

i used to be exceptionally confrontational when someone brought my beliefs into question. i cannot count how many times i slammed a fist onto a lunch table while arguing in middle and high school. that’s not who i am anymore. i don’t like to argue. i don’t like to lambast the beliefs of others. it just isn’t who i am. i can respect just about any belief held by someone. i can respect those who voted for john mccain just as easily as those who voted for barack obama.

i cannot, however, stand idly by when the concept of civil rights is called into question. the fight is not over for social equality. it’s not just about black and white. women still stand a heads length below men in most arenas. latinos are maligned on a level not seen since the early struggles of the 1960s. native americans have never been given proper due in this country.

so do not tell me that the civil rights movement has been belabored.

as to the bible, it speaks of how we were all created in the image of god. that places us all on an equal level in the eyes of god. no matter gender, race, or social class. we are all children of god. and thus we all have rights to equality. but it goes beyond that. look around you. this nation is made up of parts and pieces that make it whole. american culture is as varied as the people who comprise this country.

and for my southern brothers and sisters who are worried about losing your heritage: i will go out on a limb and assure you that black democrats are not trying to take away your antebellum dresses or your camouflage hats.

so while i prefer not to be confrontational, i simply cannot stand silent when ignorance reigns. it violates my very core beliefs and values. the civil rights movement is not over as long as people are told they are less than equal members of our society because of their race, gender, or social class. and i will fight for the equality anyone who is subjugated by our society, whether they are black, white, male, female, straight, gay, etc. everyone counts here.

“and if america is to be a great nation, this must become true.”

-quotations from dr. king’s “i have a dream”-

really? more of this?

i haven't blogged in a while. i have no excuses really. i'm back in school which is good...except for the assignments part. i'm working several hours a week which means i'll have an income again at some point. i'm getting ready to start back to weight watchers so i can refocus and start working toward a healthier me again. i'm gonna workout again this semester. i have an amazing girlfriend. my life is good. maybe that's why i haven't blogged. maybe that means it's time for me to start writing some prose or poetry...less stream-of-consciousness bitching...i can be okay with that...

words that move

my brother-in-law is a freaking amazing writer. you should read his stuff. his words move off the page a create more than a news story...they create a life story. start HERE.