it's been a cold week- a gray bitter chill settling over the whole valley, though we got off for an entire week starting friday. by the time i left work friday afternoon, the place was a ghost town- and i'd begun really keying into the natural beauty of the place- even bringing my camera, etc., to work, to catch the lines, the flowers, the colors etc. i've always said november is the prettiest month, and it is- the showy bright reds & yellows give way to darker, more subtle browns and grays- and as it gets a little wetter around here, as it does, the colors come out even more. i don't mind a little cold, and what i really like is that it doesn't get miserable again until at least may, so it's clear sailing in terms of being outside.

put a pop exhibit together- but it's temporary- it just needed a home while i find a place to put it. on the siuc pages, i put an siuc logo and do it for siuc, basically- my plan was to put pop art on all these old pages that are falling into disrepair or disuse, thus making a kind of underground siuc pop gallery. i have mixed feelings about it, though, i'm thinking of putting it more on my own personal space and saying, well, i took these & did 'em, maybe i should keep them to use on my own work. but meanwhile, i'm also doing a lot of professional writing, about grammar, grammar-checker, chat, etc.- and, any dry essay or piece of writing, professional or not, needs some decoration. slowly slowly i redo the cesl directories, starting with this one, which a kind of standing alliance with every esl/efl teacher in the world, a directory that had clearly and definitely fallen into disrepair, but which is now on its way up. i find that if i concentrate on the visuals- and the links- it's a slow but steady road back to respectable, especially where the static web is concerned.

out on the electronic frontier everyone is into social bookmarking, which means that a person can basically tap into everyone's opinions about what is important & good, and one no longer has to do hard research about anything. computers slowly but surely replace all our skills...assuming, on the grammar front, that they master the technology of grammar-checker- to the point where it effectively checks every word that has ever been published, thus is able to tell you that "On the other hand" is more likely than "In the other hand" at the beginning of a sentence; assuming they are so good at this that nobody needs a grammar teacher, since the computer will just take your thoughts & make complete sentences out of them...and assuming, then, that if you want to know about something, say, grammar-checker's effect on esl learners, or even spell-check's effect on any learners, you just have to go to a socially connected del.ic.ious or diigo or whatever, and get what all the smart people think is the best stuff written about it...then, basically, the computer is quickly replacing the things i was good at, and i'll be in the same boat those automakers were in about twenty years ago. i used to think, the value of an esl teacher is not so much to know everything about grammar, but to know how to find out something about grammar, how to find out & then explain it in ways a person could understand it. then, maybe it's now how to feed the question into a computer, and take the reams of data & interpret them. who knows?

then again, my head is spinning that gas is under $2.00/gal, & everyone is worried about it...surely, people are buying less; they're worried about the spiraling and jumpy economy, stock market fixin' to crash, depression setting in, etc. credit drying up too & that's probably the crux of it, since 3/4 of the money flying around was probably credit money anyway, with very little of the real stuff left that's not in some rich guy's pocket or some factory on the other side of the globe. but here, they're worried 'cause prices are too low, nobody's buying, and they have to keep crashing everything just to draw the customers in. well that's an interesting turnabout. but maybe it's how it should have been all along.

then, i'll play music at an 'alternative gift fair,' dec. 7, crafts & different shop-anywhere-but-walmart kind of market. i always do, but usually wait until about dec. 23 or so; by then it's too late. if i'm organized, i'll get a pop-art calendar this year (if you've read this far, maybe you clicked on the exhibit above; that would be a good place to start maybe). ideas are welcome...thing is, i have no idea how to print such things, it'll be an experience in learning, and printing. just hoping, that it all works, and that i can get off my u-no-wut during this week of break.

which reminds me, the world celebrating no-mo-write-no-mo-novel-mo, one son celebrating n0-m0-shave-n0-m0-put-m0-px-0n-fb00k-m0, and a daughter celebrating f0-get-the-n0vel-n-bl0g-ab0t-p00p-mo, i myself am starting d0nt-leave-the-h00se-4-nuthn-n-frgt-that-pile-a-papers-m0, at least during break. am thinking of getting on twitter, where the whole idea is, put it in 140 characters, no more no less- this of course, brings up the question, try to tell a whole story in 140? or try to be haiku, less is more? it's like facebook-status-poetry, the power to fill everyone's inbox w/lyrical intrigue, an opportunity, going wasted at the moment, to fill the world with tinyurl actualism, the likes of which haven't been seen since the new york subways got tagged with poetry, back in the seventies. the thing is, virtual actualism is like, well, html in an ashtray. with pixels, rising slowly, in rings, and gathering in a haze, up near the ceiling...it's here & now, ok, & makes up in links, out into the hazy virtual yonder, what it's missing in bellicosity, & novel ideas. but i'm too tired. have laundry to move, and, am thinking pop-art, at this point still. sharpen!