I am melancholic tonight. You look back from the far side of twenty five and wonder what ever became of all those wild nights. As though it was someone else’s, the life you once lived, it grows smaller in the mirror every day. The fictions and fairytales pour in to fill the gaps, and the gray ridges...

Just finished Breaking Bad. I approve wholeheartedly.

Protip: All your high school teachers got/get hammered on Fridays. I know this from experience. I know one of them drank alcohol during the school day. She was quite the character. One of my friends inspected her "tea" while she wasn't in the classroom and found out that it wasn't tea, ha...

Eurovision is fun and whiskey is fantastic.

Most alcohol requires that the taster acclimate to them. Beer is no exception.

Protip: All your high school teachers got/get hammered on Fridays.

I know this from experience.

Oh man. That was hilarious. I needed that. I realize this conversation needs to stop but just to clarify things: Noodles is basically right about everything he says, except about me, I'm fairly regular. Oakland PD is so ridiculously understaffed that they can't even respond to most major the...

I hope you get those kids to respect you soon, Starfe. I never was the kid starting all the ruckus, but I was friends with one of them once. It's all a matter of respect. The student in my class who is the biggest problem has below a 1.0 GPA and two drug addict, alcoholic, parents who beat the hell...

Today was a crappy day all around. C'est la vie. Yessir. It was shitty one. Hope it wasn't too bad for you. Today I played "the waiting game" with my students. Its a popular teacher technique where you just do nothing until they calm the fuck down. Most students who cause trouble in the f...

I can wear basically whatever I want. But I do dress shirt, slacks, tie, and dress shoes everyday because it is very, very, rare for young men in East Oakland to see what acceptable workplace dress looks like.

Today I gave out 37 detentions.

I have 82 students.

That should give you a good idea of how my day was.

I'm officially a 9th grade (grade 9, ages 13ish-15ish) English teacher in East Oakland. My school is pretty great, and most of my students are really nice, but about 15 of them are difficult to control, and about 5 of them are actual monsters who get kicked out of my class at least twice a week. I h...

One of my students is reading The Inferno.

And I don't have nearly enough copies of Scott Pilgrim to meet demand.

Mission accomplished.

Though I am basically perpetually wearing a shirt and tie, in an effort to convince urban school kids that sometimes adult men have jobs that aren't gang enforcer, rapper, athlete, or drug dealer, I would probably be interested in this.

I call 23.

Noodles gets to meet everyone because of his proximity to one of the largest cities in North America.

Also meeting up with noodles was one of the highlights of my summer.