things that i think: Archive

Take Two

Likes: 1) When Harry Met Sally - Laura talked me into watching When Harry Met Sally this past weekend and - wait - let me rephrase that. I talked myself into watching When Harry Met Sally this past weekend because Laura had recently purchased and I knew it would fit perfectly into the category of my guilty pleasure movies, that is, silly love stories. I don’t know if guilty pleasure is the...

May 4th

Trying Something

Likes: 1) Surfing Pikachu -Without getting into any embarrassing details I have to say that Pokemon Soul Silver is more than just a remake. I feel like I’m reliving my middle school years, only with better graphics. The weirdest part of Soul Silver? 10 years ago when the original Pokemon Silver came out I was a student in Middle School. Now I’m teaching in that same Middle School....

May 3rd

The Office - Fan Script - Reunion (by me) →

This is a script for The Office I wrote about one year ago. It’s titled “Reunion” and takes place at the end of Season 5, but before Charles Miner comes into the picture (along with all the Michael Scott Paper Co. shenanigans.) Please leave feedback. I’m currently plotting out two other episodes in my head - one for Arrested Development, and another untitled Lost spin-off...

Apr 5th

Jingle Jangle

First of all, the next time I see I bird I’m going to ask it if they would like it if I pooped on their car. How rude. I’m really just updating this because I realized while driving the other day that I have a real knack for turning decently popular classic rock songs into TV jingles for spin-off food products. 1. Tangled Up In Blue by Bob Dylan becomes Tiny Muffin Blues, for...

Jul 26th

Before & After

One of my favorite things about Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune is the “Before & After category both shows use on occaision. Theirs are clever, but I like mine better: Baby Got Back to the Future Tom Cruise Control The Fellowship of the Ring Tone The Long and Winding Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Soup The Big Bad Wolf Blitzer I could go on...

Jun 11th

Jun 8th

Twitter

I don’t like Twitter. I find it to be too constricted, impossible to maintain consistent wit on, and otherwise too titillating for its own good. That said, I do enjoy imposters, and Twitter provides means for the sincerest form of flattery. Therefore, I’ve indulged in creating a twitter for my dear old friend Lenny. Also, who isn’t talking about Twitter these days, I mean come...

Mar 22nd

I'm so stupid, pt. 2

No, I didn’t kill any plants this time. Worse. I was signing up for my teaching certification online. Very official. Very important. I spelled my last name Misky. In case you didn’t know - that’s not my last name (It’s Mirsky.) I had to fill out a form asking for a name change, and they asked me for the reason I was changing it. The options were marriage, divorce, legal...

Mar 4th

Feb 25th

Sermon to the Birds

My little sisters, the birds, much bounden are ye unto God, your Creator, and always in every place ought ye to praise Him, for that He hath given you liberty to fly about everywhere, and hath also given you double and triple rainment; moreover He preserved your seed in the ark of Noah, that your race might not perish out of the world; still more are ye beholden to Him for the element of the air...

Feb 18th

XYZ

Someone needs to write a book on proper open-fly etiquitte. There are just so many situations where people find themselves caught with their pants down, pun intended. In one example, I look back at my student teaching experience. There was a boy in a 5th grade class, who constantly, all day, every day, had his fly down. It just got kind of frustrating. Obviously, you want to spare the child the...

Feb 6th

Writing to write

I haven’t updated with any actual content, aside from a picture of an enormous eclair, which I suppose you could say sums up my life quite succinctly. What an awful word to spell. Lenny sent me a link to his tumblr that he set up as part of his humor writing class at Binghamton. He first entry denotes that he will try to write something in it daily. An exercise I suppose. I’m going to...

Feb 6th

Jan 18th

Jan 2nd

FARK.com: Class of 09 finds out the hard way that... →

I always get weirded out when the real world collides with the internet one - this is no exception. Congrats, Mark! There are people on the interwebs talking about you.

Dec 29th

Dec 15th

Dec 14th

Dec 7th

Poinstupid

I am so unintelligent. How unintelligent am I? I bought a Poinsettia to bring into my class, so I could show them the actual plant, after reading Tomie DePaola’s The Legend of the Poinsettia. The only problem was, I left the plant in my car overnight, thinking it would be okay for about 15 hours. I also forgot that I’m currently situated in western New York. In December. Lo and...

Dec 6th

Houseboys

One of my students wrote a story today, and in it he kept refering to himself and his friends as “houseboys.” It didn’t seem integral to the story, but I had to know what a houseboy was. I need to be down with whatever’s hip, no? “Shaquan, what’s a houseboy?” I asked pointing to the word. “That says homeboy!” he answered. Obviously.

Dec 3rd

Awesome

Although teacher by trade, I will also be graduating this May with an English degree. That gives me the right to complain about things like this. “Awesome” is one of those words that over the years has lost all gravitas. Dictionary.com defines awesome as “inspiring or expressing awe.” Little Jimmy down the block defines it as “really cool.” I think of it as...

Dec 2nd

Forty-Somethings on Facebook →

Facebook, although a relatively new phenomenenon, is something myself and my peers think of as a normal part of every day life. Taking it for granted as if it always has, and was always supposed to be there. Then I started getting getting friended by my parents, aunts and uncles. This kind of put things in perspective. It’s a tool, not unlike a cell phone, that happens to make communication...

Nov 27th

A Brief History of a Short Amount of Time

A few ramblings that I couldn’t gestate into full updates: 1) I realize there a great deal more things that illustrate comfort level, but I believe this is the most crucial one to gaining my friendship. If I sing in your car, you’re okay in my book. 2) Even Especially sober, I still manage to spill on my shirt. 3) NBC.com is one of many network sites with awful video players....

Nov 22nd

When You Were Young - Notes

“When You Were Young” A series of vignettes that describe the time and life of important adults in my life at my current age, twenty-one. “And sometimes you close your eyes And see the place where you used to live When you were young” – The Killers, When You Were Young Overview: Over winter break I am going to interview a number of important adults in my life, ranging from immediate family...

Nov 19th

Terminal Rollitis

If you recall an era before I used the shift key, you might have read about my brilliant idea a number of months ago. Well, it shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that the project never took flight. I simply didn’t have the motivation anymore, nor the money or man power. There was a brieft moment this summer, though, where I was feeling particularly bored and started to write the...

Nov 19th

Carte Blanche

One of the other student teachers where I’m student teaching asked me if I had any speakers she could borrow for a lesson plan she’s teaching this week. I didn’t have any, but my housemate Eric did, so I asked him if she could borrow them. Of course, this is where it’s suggested that Eric let me borrow the speakers for her in return for a blank check. Then he found out she...

Nov 17th

Nov 16th

Tales of Childhood, Pt. 1

A few things about childhood that I feel I need to be a little bit more clear about, for my own sake: For some reason, a few years ago, I started telling people when the subject came up, that children’s book author Tomie DePaola had visited my school as a child. I realize now that that was not at all the case. DePaola visited the children on an episode of Barney. I was visited at school by...

Nov 15th

Nov 9th

Retarded Potatoes

So there’s this really neat website called news-2-you that publishes a weekly newspaper for special education classrooms that takes the national and world news and breaks it down into simple sentences and includes a drawing for every word/concept/idea in the paper. I’d show you an example, but it’s $160 dollars, and I don’t like you nearly enough to spend that kind of...

Nov 7th

Vote Importance

My New York vote counted 0.74 times! How about yours? Thank you, Lenny, my constant reminder of what I would do if I had even more free time.

Nov 7th

My Interview

I just sat through a 2 hour seminar on interviewing to become a teacher. Most of the questions they will ask are ridiculous canned nonsense that you can rehearse as often as you’d like, but you’d still sweat balls when you’re in sitting in that room with 5 or 6 strangers asking you fairly personal questions. Hey - did I use “sweat balls” right? Anyway, during the...

Nov 4th

(In)famous

 (after Maria described me in a photo as "(in)famous")
Me: then why am i famous
Maria: because you know how excited they were to meet you
Me: that's true
Me: it was pretty unusual
Maria: lol why
Maria: people actually WANTING  to meet you

Nov 3rd

Rutherford B. Hayes

I really don’t want to update my tumblr while I’m drunk, but something ridiculous happened on tonight, the night of the halloween. I was sitting on the roof with Eric after we got back from a party, and someone THREW A BIBLE AT US. Anyway… we were sitting on the roof, minding our own business, yelling at people, when something hit Eric in the head. It was a bible. In the shape...

Nov 1st

Pity The Fool

I’m going to try to be as vaguely descriptive as possible, for reasons I will explain if you choose to read further. I started my second student teaching placement today. One of the students has a 1:1 aide, an older (late forties, early fifties) black gentleman who helps him out during the day. I am pretty sure he is one of the most interesting people I will ever meet in my entire life, and...

Oct 28th

The Adventures of Mr. Mirsky →

I have to keep a daily journal of my next student teaching placement, so I thought I’d do it online for the world to read. The only different between this page, and my teaching blog is that this one is R rated, the teaching blog is PG. Also, I didn’t want to cram up this site with lots of teaching nonsense, although I assure you I will still include plenty of ridiculous stories.

Oct 26th

Oct 23rd

Dirt on my Shirt

In a stunning turn of events I find myself writing the following sentence… As a parting gift for student teaching I recieved a few childrens’ books, one of them a collection of poems by Jeff Foxworthy. Whew. Okay. Let’s hope those two things never go together again. In all honesty, though, they’re not half bad. I think I could do better, though, and doubt they would have...

Oct 23rd

Poetry

In what I undoubtedly would call a rush assignment, I realized I had to do one more “project” with my students before tomorrow. I decided to let the kids write some poems, using a few literary devices we had just started learning about. Here are some of my favorite. I am Louisiana I am Louisiana I have Hot Peppers growing like crazy. - Zack D Potato Haiku We like potatoes Fried...

Oct 20th

Cats

I’m not on campus a lot this semester, but when I do venture into the abyss I’ve noticed one big change - Cats. There are cats like… everywhere! Whenever I walk down to the library a whole mess of ‘em always pop up and scamper across the sidewalk. They’re adorable, and stray, and probably living in the construction zone of the science buildings. Anyway, I realized...

Oct 19th

More evil than I used to look

I got a haircut a few days ago, a bit shorter than I usually would. It was my first time getting a haircut while student teaching. I came into school on Monday, pretty happy with how it turned out, when one of my students told me, “Mr. Mirsky, your haircut makes you look more evil.” “What?! How can a haircut make someone look evil?” “Well… more evil than you...

Oct 17th

Nonchalant

Before killing bugs I like to act really nonchalant, that way they never see it coming. Stupid bugs…

Oct 16th

Debate Drinking Game

With the Presidential debates coming to an end tonight, I feel it is fit to celebrate with a drinking game. Even though I’m teaching tomorrow. Here are the rules: DEBATE DRINKING GAME: Drink when McCain: - says My friends - says Maverick - says Fundamental - says Surge - says POW - says Country Drink when Obama: - says Change - says Middle class - says Bush - says “I...

Oct 16th

You're fired.

In school the other day, while grading papers, I called a boy over to my desk. “Michael, could you come here a minute?” He walked over, worriedly. Perhaps he failed his spelling test. “Michael…. I didn’t want to do this to you, but you’re fired.” “WHAT?!” A look of panic and bewilderment took his face, like none I had ever seen before. He...

Sep 29th

“Ah yes, the boy who wrote an entire essay on George Washington and failed to...”

– The 4th grade teacher of a a student in my class, discussing his academic achievements

Sep 17th

Trustbuster

I started student teaching a few days ago, which of course, means new stories to tell about children. I was reading a story about Teddy Roosevelt to the class during read aloud, which mentions that he was an avid hunter and kept a journal of the things he killed. Upon finishing the sentence, one of the students quickly interrupted, “I once killed a squirrel with a garden hose!” ...

Sep 4th

Clowns

The Carly Simon song “You’re So Vain” would be much more entertaining and interesting if you replaced the word clouds with clowns. “But you gave away the things you loved And one of them was me I had some dreams they were clowns in my coffee Clowns in my coffee, and…” I would like to illustrate that one day. In other news I started a facebook group to stop...

Aug 15th

Teenage Heartthrob

Top left to right: Paul Walker (74%), James Van Der Beek (71%), Jesse Bradford (71%), Kevin Richardson (71%) Bottom left to right: Colin Farrell (63%), Hugh Grant (55%), Miguel Indurain (54%), Ruud van Nistelrooy (53%) Thanks to Lenny for the site. I think the last guy might be a caveman. Also, why did both Lenny and I take photos with our shirts off?

Aug 6th

Aug 2nd