All right, so I'm a dedicated gamer, given the chance. After a shitty workweek, unleashing "Burning" Takarov, priest of the thoroughly evil god of Fire and Poison on an unsuspecting village in the company of the equally vile Lovefist brothers had a cathartic joy to it. And of course, our interminable avatar campaigns in the World of Darkness allow an even more direct opportunity to blow off steam.
But let's face it, all gamers suck. Here's why-
1- We will tell you about our characters, knowing full well that you do not give a fuck. We will also tell you about how much we hate it when people tell us about their characters, because that's how we roll.
2- We find our in-jokes funny. Then we ruin them by explaining them to you. Honestly, if you weren't there, "that time Mike said we'd kill him if he fucked up" just isn't that funny.
3- We will argue endlessly about truly pointless shit in imaginary worlds. You have not experienced Hell until you've seen a Forgotten Realms fan throw down with a Greyhawk fan about the respective merits of their settings. And while just about everyone on Earth is capable of this, only gamers and other geeks will get in a frothing rage about why Elminster could totally kick Mordenkainen's ass. If they start citing page numbers, you're probably on the internet, and should just navigate to a porn site to unwind.
4- We, aware as we are of stereotypical social awkwardness, will still pick on gamers who "do it wrong." In the game store I worked at in Bloomington, we had a guy we called C.K.W. (Coolest Kid in the World) who we endlessly put down and abused in-game. A simpler, mature solution would have been to not let him play since his style pissed us off. But lord knows, we can't turn a fellow gamer away. Especially not when he's more pathetic than we are and makes us look better by comparison.
5- We have to be cool. And we have to prove it. Drunken rednecks have nothing on pencil-wristed gamers when it comes to dick-measuring contests. About shit that is usually either trivial, fictitious, or just useless.
6- Our system is better than yours. We have a tendency to cling to a gaming system we like as if it contained the only water left in the universe. And revised versions of systems we like are greeted with hostility. For example, I started playing D&D when it was AD&D 2nd Edition. A system, which, by the way, sucked the meat missile. GOD it was awful and arbitrary. But it took me a while to warm up to 3rd Edition, because, well, it was change. And would Eldred Shadowmere, Dual-Wielding Ranger Who Could Totally Kick Drizzt's Ass And I had The Stats To Prove It survive the transition unchanged?! WHO KNEW?!
7- If you don't like a system, you clearly just played it wrong. Of course. It has nothing to do with the fact that you hated how it worked. Or that character creation required ninety-seven charts... or had NO charts! GASP! Our terminal inability to accept style differences stems from another problem...
8- We are frequently one or two players short of a good group, and will therefore take in strays who then have an awful time while we mock them. Lord knows, if we just loosened up and had fun, we might get farther, but THIS game is S E R I O U S. We promise. With all of these differences, each group inevitably feels it is doing things "right," and pities others who can't get the hang of it, which feeds back into 4, 6 and 7.
9- We spend money on crap we could easily make up. Don't believe me? World of Darkness: Hong Kong. Rather than, say, looking into an area's history and making up your own imaginary shit to put in it, you instead buy White Wolf's. Doubly shaming if you're playing a game in a TOTALLY fictitious world. News flash- Almost none of their fluff is that great or original. If you make up some derivative crap, don;t worry- you're just like 97% of published fantasy or science fiction novels.
10- We are aware of every single one of these flaws, and we do nothing about it. Seriously.
Now, in conclusion, let me say that I still love this damned hobby, and I miss my old group to death. Why? Because we try as hard as we can to mitigate some of this list. Say, I'm sure my old seat's open, why don't you drop by and try a game? Don't worry if you don't get it at first, but they're totally doing it right.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
The Kobuk Catechism
The following are phrases, words and notions that I've adopted in the ten weeks I've lived up here... Explanations are best kept to a minimum- nothing ever gets explained terribly well up here, and I kinda like it.
OMGWTFFTS- "Oh My God, What The Fuck, Fuck This Shit."- Sort of the mantra for our first week of school. I still keep it handy.
"Probably not today."- Says it all.
"Nothing works here."- Ditto.
"A Plan is just a series of events that don't happen."
"Adii"- Inupiaq for "I don't waaaaaannnna." Best said in a grating whine.
"Sometimes always never."- Once in a blue fucking moon.
"Alaapaa."- Inupiaq for "It's cold." With perhaps a "god damn it" on the end, depending on the tone.
"Make your peace with ugly"- A repeated catchphrase from Yours Truly to the two experienced teachers who are new to Village life.
OMGWTFFTS- "Oh My God, What The Fuck, Fuck This Shit."- Sort of the mantra for our first week of school. I still keep it handy.
"Probably not today."- Says it all.
"Nothing works here."- Ditto.
"A Plan is just a series of events that don't happen."
"Adii"- Inupiaq for "I don't waaaaaannnna." Best said in a grating whine.
"Sometimes always never."- Once in a blue fucking moon.
"Alaapaa."- Inupiaq for "It's cold." With perhaps a "god damn it" on the end, depending on the tone.
"Make your peace with ugly"- A repeated catchphrase from Yours Truly to the two experienced teachers who are new to Village life.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
"Never ever do this."
There's something about the northern latitudes that brings out the macho insanity in nearly everybody.
And I don't mean the "Hey, y'all, watch this!" brand you find down south, either.
No, I'm talking about the kind of macho insanity that makes heading out on an icy river after sundown in a small john-boat to set nets sound reasonable.
Or the kind that makes you leap at the chance to work on top of a rickety fish-rack, passing a chainsaw back and forth.
Or hop on a 4-wheeler without checking fuel status to roar into the mountains on a joyride into totally uninhabited wilderness.
In other words, you start doing the kind of thing that makes responsible people cringe.
But don't worry- you're hardly alone.
And I don't mean the "Hey, y'all, watch this!" brand you find down south, either.
No, I'm talking about the kind of macho insanity that makes heading out on an icy river after sundown in a small john-boat to set nets sound reasonable.
Or the kind that makes you leap at the chance to work on top of a rickety fish-rack, passing a chainsaw back and forth.
Or hop on a 4-wheeler without checking fuel status to roar into the mountains on a joyride into totally uninhabited wilderness.
In other words, you start doing the kind of thing that makes responsible people cringe.
But don't worry- you're hardly alone.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Cameras and Me.
Let's make on thing perfectly clear.
I hate cameras.
Part of it may be that I am, to be charitable, the least photogenic person I know. I'm nothing to sing about in the flesh, but photos of me are almost universally awful. Whatever's left of my vanity doesn't need the abuse.
And then there's the fact that pictures don't fucking get it.
I saw the sunlight playing over the mountains behind town a few days ago. The trees with their fall colors, the undergrowth in its rich shades of red, lit by the powerful sun... And I know that any picture I took would merely be pretty. It would not capture what moved me to take it in the first place.
I also loathe the way people (myself included, lord knows), will strike poses and mug for the damned camera. Heaven forbid you should be caught looking like yourself. No picture of a person that isn't grainy security footage ever captures their real face- just the face they decided they wanted on film. And frankly, fuck that noise.
I hate cameras.
Part of it may be that I am, to be charitable, the least photogenic person I know. I'm nothing to sing about in the flesh, but photos of me are almost universally awful. Whatever's left of my vanity doesn't need the abuse.
And then there's the fact that pictures don't fucking get it.
I saw the sunlight playing over the mountains behind town a few days ago. The trees with their fall colors, the undergrowth in its rich shades of red, lit by the powerful sun... And I know that any picture I took would merely be pretty. It would not capture what moved me to take it in the first place.
I also loathe the way people (myself included, lord knows), will strike poses and mug for the damned camera. Heaven forbid you should be caught looking like yourself. No picture of a person that isn't grainy security footage ever captures their real face- just the face they decided they wanted on film. And frankly, fuck that noise.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Because NO ONE demanded it!
My review of the Friday the 13th series, from start to remake, film by film.
Here we go.
Friday the 13th
The original, and the one that has the least to do with Jason Voorhes, the franchise's iconic monster. A fairly well-scripted little piece of work, and an example of something many slasher flicks neglect- The viewer is led to at least kind of like most of the victims, and all of them have lives beyond being impaled, stabbed, or otherwise doomed. These are people with plans for the future- plans which are, of course, fucking doomed. As anyone who saw Scream can tell you, the killer in this film is actually Jason's mother, Pamela Voorhes. Jason himself is presumed dead, having drowned years earlier. He does pop up to fuck with the heroine near the end, looking like a waterlogged, zombified little boy. We can therefore assume that this film regards him as dead or Undead, because he hasn't visibly aged since his drowning. All told, a pretty damn solid movie.
Friday the 13th, Part 2
And here we get Jason himself as the main man. The script still focuses mainly on the helpless chumps whose deaths are inevitable- one of whom, in a wheelchair, is killed so awesomely that they use his last ride with a knife in his head as stock footage for the rest of the series. Jason is reinvented as having survived his alleged drowning and runs around with a bag over his head, in the tradition of The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Jason is basically just a big, tough, normal dude (or so we are led to believe). He takes a hellacious pounding and is presumed dead at the end of the film. Not as good as the original, to be sure, but still pretty damn good.
Friday the 13th, Part III
The only reason anybody even remembers this one is basic sequential numbering. Oh, that, and it introduces Jason's hockey mask... about 75% of the way through the movie. While some token effort is expended on the victim characters in this one, the effort really falls flat. This also marks the first time we see Jason surviving anything truly unbelievable, but it's still attributed to his being an insanely tough mortal. An axe to the head puts him down, apparently dead. With that said, this third entry is a horrible clunker, with all of the right elements there, but in a bad mix.
Friday the 13th IV- The Final Chapter
This, in many ways, marks the first film in the series as it would later be perceived. Jason gets carted off to a morgue (an axe to the head can kinda do that) where he wakes up, kills some chumps, and wanders off. The victim cast in this is a little better than the last, but still nothing to write home about. Still, we at least acknowledge that some of them are people we sort of care about. This film also introduces Tommy Jarvis, who has the distinction of being the only non-Jason character to appear in multiple installments of the series... and survive. Jason does his thing, kills some folks, and then Tommy and his sister trick the big ox, get the drop on him, and basically hack his shit up. Jason is pretty emphatically dead at the end of this one- the "sequel shot" is Tommy's face as he hugs his sister in the hospital. Of course, since he's played by Corey Feldman, it feels less like dread and more like "what a funny-looking kid." Oh well. Still kinda fun.
Friday the 13th V- A New Beginning
Dear Christ does this one suck. Jason makes an appearance as hallucinations in a now young-adult Tommy Jarvis' mind, but he's not actually in the fucking movie. Nope. In fact, we're told he was cremated, and his ashes scattered. So we sit around this funny farm where Tommy's gone for therapy, while someone (we're supposed to think it's Tommy) runs around killing people. Had it actually been Tommy, it would have been predictable, but cool. But nope, we have some nutjob in a different hockey mask killing people for a reason they clearly just trumped up out of nowhere. Yes. Our killer isn't even a real character... nor are most of his victims- from here on in, they're purely caricatures who elicit no sympathy. This one isn't even required viewing for the series, because nothing that fucking happens in it is referenced ever again, aside from a throwaway line in the next film. It's not even a good movie in its own right- it's a crap movie cashing in on a franchise it's only part of because someone figured they could crap out a script in time.
Friday the 13th VI- Jason Lives
Apparently the folks at Paramount agree with my assessment of part V, because they quietly sweep it under the rug in this one. We open with Tommy Jarvis having gotten out of the institution, driving to Jason's grave in order to burn his body. So much for the cremation they referenced in Part V. So Tommy and his dumbfuck friend dig up Jason, Tommy loses his shit and stabs the corpse with part of a wrought-iron cemetery fence... which is then struck by lightning, resurrecting Jason. This is the first time he quite explicitly comes back from the dead. For some reason, Tommy has Jason's hockey mask- wouldn't that thing be in an evidence locker somewhere? I guess given the Undead Killer in this movie, I can let that bit of stupidity slide. So, Jason gets up and starts killing people. Tommy has a hard time getting anybody to believe him... and why not? They fucking buried a corpse which has been nice and dead for years before this fuckhead dug it up. Ah well. Tommy and his new girlfriend manage to lure Jaosn out into the lake and chain him to a rock, keeping him pinned and immobile under the water. Yay. Honestly? Dumb as it is, this may be my favorite "supernatural" Jason flick. It's dumb in the right ways.
Friday the 13th VII- The New Blood
Since things weren't dumb enough yet, this flick introduces a telekinetic chick to serve as Jason's foil. She dredges him out of the lake (which, you know, nobody should have been allowed near, what with the undead killing machine stuck out in it). He slaughters some people whole she grapples with Daddy issues before whupping Jason's ass via telekinesis, and dumping him in the lake. Again. Ugh.
Friday the 13th VIII- Jason Takes Manhattan
Possibly the worst of the films to actually tie into the storyline. This one is just idiotic. Amusingly, Jason doesn't "take" Manhattan until about three quarters of the movie has dragged by. Not only do we not care about his victims at this point, we now don't give a shit about the "hero" characters, either. They're bad rehashes of earlier characters, and by the time they're in New York, being chased by Jason, we share the locals supposedly cold-hearted indifference to their fate. The whole movie from the time the Statue of Liberty is sighted is one long, poorly-told joke about what jerks New Yorkers are. Oh, and apparently Manhattan's sewers flood with toxic waste every night. 'Cause, you know. Cities work like that. This one sucks so hard, it was explicitly not in continuity for the next film.
Friday the 13th IX- Jason Goes to Hell
We have no idea where the hell this one takes place in relation to the others. Part of that is because New Line, not Paramount, made it, and some of the intellectual property didn't make the jump. But there is no reference to anything except Jason's supposedly drowning as a child, his Mom killing some people, and his own alleged body count. The movie opens with Jason being blown apart by a S.W.A.T. team, and then it just gets weirder. See, Jason's body, it turns out, is just a shell. He's actually demonic. Or something. Anyway, some coroner eats his heart, gets possessed, kills some people, and then Jason jumps bodies a time or two. It's all very strange. In the end, some character we've never seen before this film says he has a magic knife that can kill Jason. He gets killed, but our hero manages to cack Voorhes, who dissolves. And then Freddy Kruger's glove drags the hockey mask down. This movie makes very, very little sense. But it's poetry compared to the next entry in the series...
Jason X-
Because, of course, Jason belongs in space. This movie is a total piece of shit, which I am proud to say I saw in theaters. Jason gets cryogenically frozen, thawed out in the future and, of course, starts slicing up teenagers in space. He gets blown to hell at one point, then gets rebuilt by futuristic nanotech looking like Super Shredder. Super-Jason fucks around, kills some people, then gets blasted out into space, and appears to be almost destroyed by atmospheric reentry. Or something. Honestly, this one was so goddamned stupid it deserves some kind of award.
Freddy vs. Jason-
Putting that behind them, New Line finally gave fans of the slasher subgenre what they'd wanted for ages... and did a way better job than Alien vs. Predator of delivering the goods. Oh, it still sucks- Kane Hodder wasn't cast as Jason because they wanted someone with "kinder eyes"- even though Jason still just basically kills everything in sight, making it hard to feel much sympathy for him. This is basically a Nightmare on Elm Street movie that happens to include Jason- Freddy carries most of the plot, and is seen as the greater menace. But what the hell, it's the fun kind of stupid.
And Finally-
Friday the 13th (2009)
This franchise went for a reboot, and high goddamned time. This flick is pretty formulaic, being sort of a group remake of parts I-III. Jason is definitely supposed to be a non-supernatural human in this one- he's portrayed as more sneaky and skilled than simply unstoppable. Not bad, but, as all remakes are doomed to, it broke no new ground. Some of the kills were noteworthy, but honestly, this one illustrates how little of impact the original would have had if it were released today.
And there you go.
Maybe next time I'll do another series.
Maybe not.
Here we go.
Friday the 13th
The original, and the one that has the least to do with Jason Voorhes, the franchise's iconic monster. A fairly well-scripted little piece of work, and an example of something many slasher flicks neglect- The viewer is led to at least kind of like most of the victims, and all of them have lives beyond being impaled, stabbed, or otherwise doomed. These are people with plans for the future- plans which are, of course, fucking doomed. As anyone who saw Scream can tell you, the killer in this film is actually Jason's mother, Pamela Voorhes. Jason himself is presumed dead, having drowned years earlier. He does pop up to fuck with the heroine near the end, looking like a waterlogged, zombified little boy. We can therefore assume that this film regards him as dead or Undead, because he hasn't visibly aged since his drowning. All told, a pretty damn solid movie.
Friday the 13th, Part 2
And here we get Jason himself as the main man. The script still focuses mainly on the helpless chumps whose deaths are inevitable- one of whom, in a wheelchair, is killed so awesomely that they use his last ride with a knife in his head as stock footage for the rest of the series. Jason is reinvented as having survived his alleged drowning and runs around with a bag over his head, in the tradition of The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Jason is basically just a big, tough, normal dude (or so we are led to believe). He takes a hellacious pounding and is presumed dead at the end of the film. Not as good as the original, to be sure, but still pretty damn good.
Friday the 13th, Part III
The only reason anybody even remembers this one is basic sequential numbering. Oh, that, and it introduces Jason's hockey mask... about 75% of the way through the movie. While some token effort is expended on the victim characters in this one, the effort really falls flat. This also marks the first time we see Jason surviving anything truly unbelievable, but it's still attributed to his being an insanely tough mortal. An axe to the head puts him down, apparently dead. With that said, this third entry is a horrible clunker, with all of the right elements there, but in a bad mix.
Friday the 13th IV- The Final Chapter
This, in many ways, marks the first film in the series as it would later be perceived. Jason gets carted off to a morgue (an axe to the head can kinda do that) where he wakes up, kills some chumps, and wanders off. The victim cast in this is a little better than the last, but still nothing to write home about. Still, we at least acknowledge that some of them are people we sort of care about. This film also introduces Tommy Jarvis, who has the distinction of being the only non-Jason character to appear in multiple installments of the series... and survive. Jason does his thing, kills some folks, and then Tommy and his sister trick the big ox, get the drop on him, and basically hack his shit up. Jason is pretty emphatically dead at the end of this one- the "sequel shot" is Tommy's face as he hugs his sister in the hospital. Of course, since he's played by Corey Feldman, it feels less like dread and more like "what a funny-looking kid." Oh well. Still kinda fun.
Friday the 13th V- A New Beginning
Dear Christ does this one suck. Jason makes an appearance as hallucinations in a now young-adult Tommy Jarvis' mind, but he's not actually in the fucking movie. Nope. In fact, we're told he was cremated, and his ashes scattered. So we sit around this funny farm where Tommy's gone for therapy, while someone (we're supposed to think it's Tommy) runs around killing people. Had it actually been Tommy, it would have been predictable, but cool. But nope, we have some nutjob in a different hockey mask killing people for a reason they clearly just trumped up out of nowhere. Yes. Our killer isn't even a real character... nor are most of his victims- from here on in, they're purely caricatures who elicit no sympathy. This one isn't even required viewing for the series, because nothing that fucking happens in it is referenced ever again, aside from a throwaway line in the next film. It's not even a good movie in its own right- it's a crap movie cashing in on a franchise it's only part of because someone figured they could crap out a script in time.
Friday the 13th VI- Jason Lives
Apparently the folks at Paramount agree with my assessment of part V, because they quietly sweep it under the rug in this one. We open with Tommy Jarvis having gotten out of the institution, driving to Jason's grave in order to burn his body. So much for the cremation they referenced in Part V. So Tommy and his dumbfuck friend dig up Jason, Tommy loses his shit and stabs the corpse with part of a wrought-iron cemetery fence... which is then struck by lightning, resurrecting Jason. This is the first time he quite explicitly comes back from the dead. For some reason, Tommy has Jason's hockey mask- wouldn't that thing be in an evidence locker somewhere? I guess given the Undead Killer in this movie, I can let that bit of stupidity slide. So, Jason gets up and starts killing people. Tommy has a hard time getting anybody to believe him... and why not? They fucking buried a corpse which has been nice and dead for years before this fuckhead dug it up. Ah well. Tommy and his new girlfriend manage to lure Jaosn out into the lake and chain him to a rock, keeping him pinned and immobile under the water. Yay. Honestly? Dumb as it is, this may be my favorite "supernatural" Jason flick. It's dumb in the right ways.
Friday the 13th VII- The New Blood
Since things weren't dumb enough yet, this flick introduces a telekinetic chick to serve as Jason's foil. She dredges him out of the lake (which, you know, nobody should have been allowed near, what with the undead killing machine stuck out in it). He slaughters some people whole she grapples with Daddy issues before whupping Jason's ass via telekinesis, and dumping him in the lake. Again. Ugh.
Friday the 13th VIII- Jason Takes Manhattan
Possibly the worst of the films to actually tie into the storyline. This one is just idiotic. Amusingly, Jason doesn't "take" Manhattan until about three quarters of the movie has dragged by. Not only do we not care about his victims at this point, we now don't give a shit about the "hero" characters, either. They're bad rehashes of earlier characters, and by the time they're in New York, being chased by Jason, we share the locals supposedly cold-hearted indifference to their fate. The whole movie from the time the Statue of Liberty is sighted is one long, poorly-told joke about what jerks New Yorkers are. Oh, and apparently Manhattan's sewers flood with toxic waste every night. 'Cause, you know. Cities work like that. This one sucks so hard, it was explicitly not in continuity for the next film.
Friday the 13th IX- Jason Goes to Hell
We have no idea where the hell this one takes place in relation to the others. Part of that is because New Line, not Paramount, made it, and some of the intellectual property didn't make the jump. But there is no reference to anything except Jason's supposedly drowning as a child, his Mom killing some people, and his own alleged body count. The movie opens with Jason being blown apart by a S.W.A.T. team, and then it just gets weirder. See, Jason's body, it turns out, is just a shell. He's actually demonic. Or something. Anyway, some coroner eats his heart, gets possessed, kills some people, and then Jason jumps bodies a time or two. It's all very strange. In the end, some character we've never seen before this film says he has a magic knife that can kill Jason. He gets killed, but our hero manages to cack Voorhes, who dissolves. And then Freddy Kruger's glove drags the hockey mask down. This movie makes very, very little sense. But it's poetry compared to the next entry in the series...
Jason X-
Because, of course, Jason belongs in space. This movie is a total piece of shit, which I am proud to say I saw in theaters. Jason gets cryogenically frozen, thawed out in the future and, of course, starts slicing up teenagers in space. He gets blown to hell at one point, then gets rebuilt by futuristic nanotech looking like Super Shredder. Super-Jason fucks around, kills some people, then gets blasted out into space, and appears to be almost destroyed by atmospheric reentry. Or something. Honestly, this one was so goddamned stupid it deserves some kind of award.
Freddy vs. Jason-
Putting that behind them, New Line finally gave fans of the slasher subgenre what they'd wanted for ages... and did a way better job than Alien vs. Predator of delivering the goods. Oh, it still sucks- Kane Hodder wasn't cast as Jason because they wanted someone with "kinder eyes"- even though Jason still just basically kills everything in sight, making it hard to feel much sympathy for him. This is basically a Nightmare on Elm Street movie that happens to include Jason- Freddy carries most of the plot, and is seen as the greater menace. But what the hell, it's the fun kind of stupid.
And Finally-
Friday the 13th (2009)
This franchise went for a reboot, and high goddamned time. This flick is pretty formulaic, being sort of a group remake of parts I-III. Jason is definitely supposed to be a non-supernatural human in this one- he's portrayed as more sneaky and skilled than simply unstoppable. Not bad, but, as all remakes are doomed to, it broke no new ground. Some of the kills were noteworthy, but honestly, this one illustrates how little of impact the original would have had if it were released today.
And there you go.
Maybe next time I'll do another series.
Maybe not.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
My Home
I live in a marvelous place. A legitimate checklist for my Saturday follows-
1. Check ammo status.
2. Sharpen Kukri.
3. Don gunbelt, pack knapsack.
4. Pay off The Russian.
5. Ride into the mountains.
6. Tea and sandwiches on a mountainside.
7. Shooting practice.
8. Ride back into town reeking of cordite.
1. Check ammo status.
2. Sharpen Kukri.
3. Don gunbelt, pack knapsack.
4. Pay off The Russian.
5. Ride into the mountains.
6. Tea and sandwiches on a mountainside.
7. Shooting practice.
8. Ride back into town reeking of cordite.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Well Hello Again.
It's been a while, hasn't it? Pull up a stump and don't mind the fish heads. The lady from the dog yard hasn't been by yet today.
When last we met, I was eulogizing my late Grandfather. Before that, I was basically pinwheeling my arms wildly and waiting for my job to begin.
A lot of water under the bridge since then.
As intended, I packed my worldly goods up and shipped them and myself off to a spectacularly scenic little corner of the Northwest Arctic, finding employment as a schoolteacher.
And oh, what a clusterfuck it has been. And at the same time, what a marvelous decision.
The bad is almost all job-related.
I don't know if I'm a good teacher, a bad teacher, or perhaps the sort of teacher who burns his entire community to the ground. It's early yet- we just finished our second week of classes.
What I do know is that any and all time spent learning about the ancestral culture of the locals is wasted. Simply and utterly wasted. Because it has sweet fuck-all to do with the students. I've gotten more mileage out of the childhood tales of some of my more colorful friends than any amount of Native Heritage study. And thank whatever deity is listening that I actually appreciate casual brutality, or I would find living here to be a chore.
As it is, the teaching is difficult. My students, bless their enlightened little hearts, do not give a shit. They ask me "why we gotta read?" And while I have answers to THAT one, some others are trickier. For example, Health Class. It's a load of shit. They know it, I know it, anyone who has ever taken Health knows it. I'm reasonably sure even the Sex-Ed part is Abstinence Only- in other words, it's an hour every day that serves as torture for both the class and for me, while teaching nothing that's going to stick.
So some classes are awful and some are good- and they all have the unusual problem that they go off every day, instead of rotating like they do in larger schools. And then we have the real gravy part.
As a small school, we have a staff of five... or should. Four full-time teachers, and one Teacher/Principal. Until the end of the first week, when our Teacher/Principal, impelled by drama from last year, transferred to another school. Yes. The pigfucker gets in one week's worth of time-wasting, then rides off into the sunset, leaving us high and dry. As of this writing, we're not completely sure what the hell is going on or who will take over. This will be a semester dictated by who manages to fail the least. It's going to be a long, hard slog.
So much for the job. I get my first paycheck soon, and so much of it is already spoken for it hurts to think about.
But the place... the place is another story altogether.
The river runs by the front of the village, rich with fish and a lot of fun to boat around on. On all sides, there is nothing but empty space. An old mine lies about fifteen miles out of town, easily reached by 4-wheeler, nestled in the mountains. The village lies on flatlands immediately south of the mountains, hemmed in by forest and tundra in a delightful mix. Caribou pass by so close that hauling their carcasses back to town is a short trip, and every day I feel as if I've woken up in a postcard. It's also a place that, in spite of the rampant alcoholism and abuse, or perhaps because of it, accepts little things that I enjoy. When I walk down the road with my kukri and my .45 on my belt, the only questions I get are "what kind of gun is that?" and "where did you get that knife?" When a small child lands a pike, no one so much as blinks if I use my kukri to finish the fish off. If I come back into town with an armload of bones or antlers, no one feels a need to comment. If someone wants a dog put down, there's no song and dance about animal cruelty... someone just takes the mutt out to the airstrip and shoots it, then hauls its corpse to the dump.
In other words, it's a place where folks leave one another alone unless they're invited over or unless they need something. It's a place where I run the risk of being the most sentimental man in town.
And it's a place where I can watch old women dress out fish with an ulu in less than fifteen seconds. Where fish racks dot the riverside, and where caribou bones lie under nearly every house.
In other words, if I can stand the teaching for few hours a day, it's possibly one of the best places in the world for me to be.
When last we met, I was eulogizing my late Grandfather. Before that, I was basically pinwheeling my arms wildly and waiting for my job to begin.
A lot of water under the bridge since then.
As intended, I packed my worldly goods up and shipped them and myself off to a spectacularly scenic little corner of the Northwest Arctic, finding employment as a schoolteacher.
And oh, what a clusterfuck it has been. And at the same time, what a marvelous decision.
The bad is almost all job-related.
I don't know if I'm a good teacher, a bad teacher, or perhaps the sort of teacher who burns his entire community to the ground. It's early yet- we just finished our second week of classes.
What I do know is that any and all time spent learning about the ancestral culture of the locals is wasted. Simply and utterly wasted. Because it has sweet fuck-all to do with the students. I've gotten more mileage out of the childhood tales of some of my more colorful friends than any amount of Native Heritage study. And thank whatever deity is listening that I actually appreciate casual brutality, or I would find living here to be a chore.
As it is, the teaching is difficult. My students, bless their enlightened little hearts, do not give a shit. They ask me "why we gotta read?" And while I have answers to THAT one, some others are trickier. For example, Health Class. It's a load of shit. They know it, I know it, anyone who has ever taken Health knows it. I'm reasonably sure even the Sex-Ed part is Abstinence Only- in other words, it's an hour every day that serves as torture for both the class and for me, while teaching nothing that's going to stick.
So some classes are awful and some are good- and they all have the unusual problem that they go off every day, instead of rotating like they do in larger schools. And then we have the real gravy part.
As a small school, we have a staff of five... or should. Four full-time teachers, and one Teacher/Principal. Until the end of the first week, when our Teacher/Principal, impelled by drama from last year, transferred to another school. Yes. The pigfucker gets in one week's worth of time-wasting, then rides off into the sunset, leaving us high and dry. As of this writing, we're not completely sure what the hell is going on or who will take over. This will be a semester dictated by who manages to fail the least. It's going to be a long, hard slog.
So much for the job. I get my first paycheck soon, and so much of it is already spoken for it hurts to think about.
But the place... the place is another story altogether.
The river runs by the front of the village, rich with fish and a lot of fun to boat around on. On all sides, there is nothing but empty space. An old mine lies about fifteen miles out of town, easily reached by 4-wheeler, nestled in the mountains. The village lies on flatlands immediately south of the mountains, hemmed in by forest and tundra in a delightful mix. Caribou pass by so close that hauling their carcasses back to town is a short trip, and every day I feel as if I've woken up in a postcard. It's also a place that, in spite of the rampant alcoholism and abuse, or perhaps because of it, accepts little things that I enjoy. When I walk down the road with my kukri and my .45 on my belt, the only questions I get are "what kind of gun is that?" and "where did you get that knife?" When a small child lands a pike, no one so much as blinks if I use my kukri to finish the fish off. If I come back into town with an armload of bones or antlers, no one feels a need to comment. If someone wants a dog put down, there's no song and dance about animal cruelty... someone just takes the mutt out to the airstrip and shoots it, then hauls its corpse to the dump.
In other words, it's a place where folks leave one another alone unless they're invited over or unless they need something. It's a place where I run the risk of being the most sentimental man in town.
And it's a place where I can watch old women dress out fish with an ulu in less than fifteen seconds. Where fish racks dot the riverside, and where caribou bones lie under nearly every house.
In other words, if I can stand the teaching for few hours a day, it's possibly one of the best places in the world for me to be.
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