8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Luke 2
King James Version (KJV)

However you mark this day, a very Merry Christmas!
May this find you and yours happy and healthy, this holiday season and in the new year to come!

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Hey all – no column this week due to travel and timing.

One thing to highlight: Penn State’s women’s volleyball team won its 6th national championship in the last eight years this week. Amazing. Congratulations to them.

See you next week.

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Flings: Stories by Justin Taylor, a book of short stories, is interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying. The blurb on the back names Taylor “A master of the modern snapshot” and they might well be right. The book is like a stack of Polaroids, taken by strangers and with no context to explain them. (Think Awkward Family Photos.) They are fascinating, funny, vaguely disturbing, but by themselves, they aren’t enough to tell a story.

As always, I wanted to love the book – I love short stories, in particular, and I always want to love the books I settle down to read – but I found this one easy to put down. That’s never a good sign. While the stories were interesting, they weren’t absorbing and they weren’t satisfying. A good example is Mike’s Song, a story about a divorced father taking his adult children to a Phish concert. There is some hint that the divorce was his fault – probably something to do with his new girlfriend, Lori, who may or may not be cheating on him, based on some misdirected texts – and there is some random reference to a neighborhood boy who committed suicide back when his kids were in their teens. It is most definitely a snapshot. It’s an odd, awkward night with this family, full of tense undertones and secrets no one talks about. I can see why some people might be fascinated with it, the way you can be fascinated staring into a lighted window, watching the family inside and wondering about them, but in the end? I wasn’t drawn in. I didn’t care how it ended — which is a good thing because it doesn’t end, not in the sense that anything is wrapped up and resolved. We learn a few things about them, Mike learns a few things about his kids, but you don’t get any sense of what will come of that knowledge. We walk past the window and on to another one.

One story I felt was much more successful was After Ellen –  Scott leaves his girlfriend because she suggests getting a dog and he can suddenly see his whole life stretching out before him. The dog is just the start, the test before they have kids, get a house in the suburbs, a minivan, a carpool, etc., etc., etc. So he takes off, sneaking out while Ellen is at work, taking his half of their stuff, the car, and leaving her a note. He crashes in an expensive hotel with Mom and Dad’s credit card, and eventually finds a new place, a new gig as a DJ, a new girlfriend…and a dog. It goes somewhere. It has some resolution to it.

Now, there may be people who really appreciate these kinds of snapshot stories; apparently, I’m not one of them. The book, for me, was like seeing Waiting for Godot: I spent the whole time waiting for something to happen, feeling like there were clues and allusions that I was missing. There’s a fair amount of graphic sex in the stories that seems sprinkled in at random, more for shock value than anything else; for me, it didn’t seem to serve the story. While I enjoyed some of the writing and found interesting bits in most of the stories, overall, they left me unsatisfied. It was easy to put the book down and walk away because even the stories I finished felt unfinished.

My copy of Flings: Stories was an Advance Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

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10. Hospital Waste Grab Bag

9. Hello Kitty Tiki Torches

8. Miss Piggy’s Big Bag O’ Pork

7. Easy Bake Microwave

6. Baby’s First Choking Hazard

5. Lil’ Devil: The Satan-Worshipping Game

4. The José Canseco Finger Trimmer

3. The ISIS Indoctrination Reader

2. Toddlers & Tiaras‘ Official You’re Never Too Young To Twerk Outfit

1. Mr. Wizard’s Live-Culture Ebola Kit

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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So, to me, these two dudes – and I wanna stress that they are dudes — in my house seem to be at the video games a lot. I thought this would never happen to me.  I thought I would steer them to loftier pursuits. But there they, at FIFA and Minecraft. I have this awful feeling their brains are leaking intellect because of video games. I particularly worry about the brightness of their literacy lights. [Read more →]

Tags: education, virtual children by Scott Warnock // 6 Comments »

Unlike a friend of mine, I am not one of those people that has ten televisions and the ability to watch all of the NFL games at once. That’s not to say I don’t wish that I were, but it is not my reality. On Sundays, if the Eagles are not playing at 1:00, I look at FOX and CBS to see which games they are carrying and I pick one to check out. Most often, I end up watching FOX, as they are usually carrying NFC games, and I am partial to that conference. This past Sunday, I was totally confused when I put on FOX and saw a game between the Cleveland Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals, two AFC teams. I had never seen that before, so it made me curious. It turns out that the reason was a predictable one: Johnny Manziel.

[Read more →]

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10. Big, Tall & Gay

9. Banana Dictatorship

8. Holly of Fredericksburg

7. Organ Donation Shack

6. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Kale

5. Turban Outfitters

4. Abercrombie & Bitch

3. Bed, Bath & Beyoncé

2. Chick-fil-A-Hole

1. Old Merchant Marines

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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Students and fans of the University of Alabama-Birmingham were dealt a tremendous blow this week when the school decided to shut down its football program. No one is more directly affected than the players and coaches, who will see the work they have done to build this program flushed away with barely a thank you. Although there was not a lot of history in this program, as it only started in 1991, the team just finished its most successful season in a decade and things were looking up. [Read more →]

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10. It’s so cold, this morning, the early bird catching the worm had gloves on.

9. It’s so cold, the optician was giving away free ice scrapers with every new pair of eyeglasses.

8. It’s so cold, hitchhikers are holding up pictures of thumbs.

7. It’s so cold, cab drivers are flipping people off with their mittens.

6. It’s so cold, people were contracting Ebola just for the fever.

5. It’s so cold, I chipped a tooth on some broth.

4. It’s so cold, if I had a stick up my butt, it’d be a popsicle.

3. It’s so cold, my aunt slipped on some ice and accidently keyed someone’s Mercedes…with her nipple!

2. It’s so cold, the Blue Man Group turned Caucasian-colored!

1. It’s so cold, Starbucks was serving coffee on a stick.
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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How much does Cosby biographer Mark Whitaker suck? I can understand not wanting to dwell on the allegations of abuse so much it became the focus of Cosby: His Life and Times…but wasn’t there some room for them in its 500-plus pages? (It includes a 19-page chapter called “The Art of Jell-O.”) Why do I feel like if Whitaker wrote a book about Ted Bundy it would focus on Ted’s academic performance at law school? [Read more →]

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Let me start off by saying: I loved this book. Nick Belsey is a sorry excuse for a cop, probably a worse boyfriend, but he is smart and determined and he just does not quit.

Deep Shelter by Oliver Harris is a terrific story, full of twists and turns, with a lot of great characters. Belsey is trying to find a suspect that disappeared down a rabbit hole. Instead, he finds a tunnel that leads into an old wartime bunker underneath London. It has offices and dorms and workspaces, it’s fully stocked with food and medical supplies — he even finds cases of champagne. They were new went they went down into the tunnels, but they are vintage now. So, of course, Belsey does what any good cop would do: he calls his dealer and his fence and makes plans to sell the drugs and the booze. Then he invites his new girlfriend, someone he arrested a while back, on a romantic trip to the tunnels.

Belsey took the candle and walked into the dorm. Bunk cages danced in the wavering light. No sign of her. He waited for his date to jump out. That would be classic. She didn’t.

“Are you OK?” he called, and his voice sounded like the voice of someone on their own.

Incredibly creepy. And it gets even creepier when he starts getting text messages and emails, taunting him. He knows that if he reports her disappearance, he’ll be the prime suspect, so he doesn’t report it. Instead, he investigates on his own. The investigation leads into an incredibly twisted story of wartime preparations, top-secret cover-ups and a city beneath the city.

If you like complicated storylines, you’ll love this. There is so much going on, so much backstory, so many interesting twists and turns that I could not put this down. I like Belsey – he’s a crooked cop, but he’s trying to do the right thing. He’s got quite an assortment of equally bent contacts, and they make for an interesting crew. The book makes me want to go back to London — I’ve been to a few of the locations mentioned in the book, like St. Pancras Station, but not many — and look for the landmarks in the book and dream of a secret city beneath my feet.

My copy of Deep Shelter is an Advance Reader Copy, provided free of charge.

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One of the favorite pastimes of sports fans is complaining about officiating. I like nothing better than yelling at the television in anguish as a referee makes brutal call after brutal call. Well, let me qualify that. I like well-officiated games the best, and I really hate when one of my teams gets screwed by a terrible call, so I shouldn’t really say that I like all the yelling. However, watching sports would not be the same for me if I didn’t get worked up and indignant a time or two while doing so. If I am watching a game in which I have no real rooting interest, especially, it really does add to my enjoyment, although it may not do the same for the people around me at the time. On Saturday night, Alabama played Auburn in a game that is known as the Iron Bowl. There were several bad calls and confusing situations in this one, but the worst one involved a “simultaneous catch” in the second half.

[Read more →]

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Part 10 (of 874) in an occasional series about how standardized tests are destroying education.

The Denver Post reported recently that thousands of high school students in Colorado refused to take standardized state tests. Activism? Test fatigue? Obstinancy? Whatever the case, I like that we’re hearing the student voice, which is often absent in the many conversations about testing. [Read more →]

Tags: education, virtual children by Scott Warnock // 7 Comments »

10. You pricked your finger for a blood-sugar test, and cranberry sauce came out

9. You’ve pounded on so much poundage, in one of the shots of earth in the film Interstellar, you are clearly visible

8. It took two EMT guys and the Jaws of Life to get you out of your Barcalounger

7. They took a picture of you after the meal, and it’s still printing

6. Both Ben and Jerry have friended you on Facebook

5. You had so many smashed potatoes, you set off another famine in Ireland

4. You’ve gotten several inquiries from representatives of the Butterball Hall of Fame

3. You ate all the leftovers…before dessert

2. After the meal, you had to loosen the band on your wristwatch

1. When people see you from the rear, for some reason they keep calling you “Kim”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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As much as I love college football, 2014 has not been a banner year for the sport. Sure, the actual game is still good, although my beloved Nittany Lions are struggling through a year that was always likely to be the worst part of the sanctions. Everything surrounding the game, though, is going to hell. The NCAA is coming apart at the seams, much to my delight, with lawsuits out the wazoo promising dramatic change for all of college athletics in the future. Beyond that, the way recruiting is handled, especially within certain conferences, continues to shed a very bad light on what is supposed to be an amateur sport played for the love of the game. The latest example of this comes to us courtesy of Mississippi State University and its head coach, Dan Mullen. This week, he pulled the scholarship offer from a kid who was about to graduate in two weeks and enroll early at MSU. [Read more →]

Tags: bad sports, good sports // 2 Comments »

10. “This turkey tastes really odd. What breed of turkey, exactly, is a ‘Tofu’?”

9. “And if I wanted to spend the day with my Indian brethren, why would I want to visit a gaming emporium?”

8. “Well, I think thine clothing looketh equally as bizarre!”

7. “And you can get advice on cooking your bird from yonder handheld talking machine?!”

6. “Big deal! So your ancestors came over on the Mayflower!”

5. “Let me get this straight: You commemorated the colony of Plymouth by naming a horseless carriage after it?”

4. “Jebediah, look! Their leader appears to be a Native American!”

3. “There is no need to struggle! Why do you not just share the wishbone?!”

2. “Celebrating Thanksgiving by having extra early Christmas sales! – Why did we not think of that?!”

1. “Hey! Let us out of these boxes! ’Tis dark in here, and dirt keeps comingeth through yon ceiling!”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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You probably are out there writing like a maniac every day of your life. A good friend of mine, on the Website 11trees, recently posted a smart blog entry describing how much he wrote in one day, what he viewed as just an average day for a “knowledge worker.” In this one-day writing diary, he calculates that he comes in at 2,500 words, a number he uses to make this point: “We write more words every day than many college or high school students write in an entire term.” [Read more →]

Tags: education, virtual children by Scott Warnock // 2 Comments »

How did the world become so filled with idiots? Why is rudeness and an oversized sense of entitlement so pervasive today? These are things that occupy my mind on a regular basis, as I encounter them every day. I am sure there are sociologists with solid theories about it, so if you know or are one, feel free to share. I have been thinking about this subject in the last few days because of a silly little incident that occurred at the game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the New Orleans Saints on Sunday. Cincinnati tight end Jermaine Gresham scored a touchdown and tossed the ball up to a couple of women in Bengals shirts who had run down to the railing as the play happened. A man, Tony Williams, sitting right there in a Saints shirt, jumped up and grabbed the ball away from one of the women and kept it.

[Read more →]

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I have been declared Emperor of the World. Let us not waste time explaining why or how; let’s all simply accept the fact that we are better off, as a result; hence, my next decree:

Emperor’s Decree No. K-9: It has come to the Emperor’s attention that some of his more worthless subjects are leaving their pets out in the cold during the most bitter of winter nights. Previously, the Emperor thought this only happened at the homes of crack addicts and of those who were helpless and who were abandoned, themselves. But he has been informed that this happens on a larger scale than he thought; that regular, able-bodied folk are either absent-mindedly or intentionally  leaving their animal pals out in the frigid winds. It will stop, today. Ye will bring your pets in out of the cold.

The Punishment: Those who do not comply will be placed on the Imperial Space Shuttles (we have lots and lots of them and money is no object). These shuttles will be auto-piloted at the sun. At the end of the trip, the offenders will more than receive the warmth they denied their helpless, dependent little fur-friends. Normally, the Emperor doesn’t defend his actions, but he would like to point out a peripheral benefit of this: We will be relieving the world’s population of a large number of people with shriveled souls. Anyone who could be so cruel to such innocent, loving creatures is no more than a pimple on the face of the Earth. The loss of such scum will be felt, surely; it will be felt not unlike the satisfaction after defecation.

Now, go forth and obey.

(The Emperor sends a hat-tip to Sara Wuillermin, who is, henceforth, promoted to the rank of “Imperial Spy, Class A.”)

The Emperor will grace the world with a new decree each Tuesday morning.

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10. He was flying on Virgin Airlines, and he was one

9. The in-flight chicken was finger-lickin’ good, and one thing led to another

8. He was flying first class, and everybody knows they’re a bunch of wankers

7. His entertainment system wasn’t working, so he had to provide his own

6. His date for the Mile High Club missed the plane

5. Different strokes for different folks

4. None of the flight attendants was providing service, so he decided to take matters into his own hands

3. He couldn’t get the song California Here I Come out of his head

2. He was afraid of flying, and just wanted to get off

1. He misunderstood the pilot’s instructions about “an upright and locked position”
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

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