More Bulletty Goodness!

• Mr. Banality and I are in the process of completing an application for adoption (this will be the third agency for us). We have to write a couple paragraphs about why we want to adopt. Mr. Banality wrote them, and it's obvious that he wrote them while he was at work because they included such sentences as, "Because of our appreciation of the developmental process, we experience considerable joy in our interactions with children," which sounds a little, um, clinical. I totally get what he's trying to say, but I think an uninformed reader might read it a bit differently. "We have a strong interest in children," could come across as, "We have a strong interest in children and look forward to keeping one in a plexiglass box so that we may observe its many behaviors." He ended up softening it up a bit by changing "children" to "kids," and adding some contractions here and there, which resulted in maintaining its sincerity while substantially reducing its creepy factor.

• I stayed up late last night and watched about 20 TV shows at the same time. Included in the mix was Keeping the Faith. Wow, that is one bad movie. Ed Norton (who also directed) plays a priest, Ben Stiller plays a rabbi, and Jenna Elfman plays the clergymen's childhood tomboyish pal who returns as a hard-driving (yet sassy and sexy) workaholic. Ugh. In one scene, Norton and Stiller are strutting along a New York City sidewalk in their leather jackets and shades, high-fiving members of their congregation as they pass by while "Smooth" plays in the background. I was so embarrassed that I had to switch over to that Bret Michaels Rock of Love show. And the dialogue. Oh, the dialogue.

"Hey, remember when we had that shoplifting club?"
"Yeah, and you had to shoplift to get into the club!"

WTF?

• Luckily, Sixteen Candles was also on, and that's always a winner in my book, although it is getting a little dated:

Ted (The Geek): Do you know what floppy disks are?
Samantha: No.
Ted: Well, they're really expensive.

• During class, I often ask, "What questions do you have? Is there anything I haven't explained clearly? What else are you curious about?" Note that the framing of these questions demonstrates that I assume they are inquisitive and interested in the material and that if they don't understand something, it's totally my fault. I know, it gives me a little nausea, too. Usually these questions are met with complete silence, save for an occasional student who wants to ask how his or her psychotropic meds will affect whatever psychological phenomenon we're discussing. During my most recent morning class, it was business as usual, but during the afternoon section, someone actually asked a question. Then the flood gates opened. I spent 30 minutes answering questions. I'm not long-winded, so this amounted to maybe 25 questions. Then we took a five-minute break, and students lined up to ask me more questions during the break. When we reconvened, they continued to ask questions for another 10 minutes. It was one of the weirdest experiences I've ever had.