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2002-03-10 - 11:24 p.m. It's late, and I need to be sleeping. But I've been thinking about some things. First of all, I've been thinking about those lame commercials a lot lately. You know: the sexist, "Mom, what's for dinner?!?!" commercials. The "OHMIGOSH, Mom's not here, she's shopping at JCPenney, so what am I, the retard husband who doesn't know what to do without Mom, going to do?" commercials. Also the, "Mom, Dad evidently just took a dump because he just left the bathroom with a newspaper, and it sure stinks! What can we do about the smell?" ones. That last one is more than sexist, it's disgusting! The idea that there is a commercial that implies that someone took a dump just grosses me out. I can't stand talking about such matters, but I had to mention that because everytime I see that commercial I wonder what the marketing Gods were thinking of. But you get the general idea of the commercials I'm talking about. I am so sick of those commercials. I was thinking maybe I could start some sort of a boycott page on the Internet. That way I could keep a running list of all the companies that think it's cool to be sexist. Then I could avoid buying their products and others could also make note of it. Maybe I could even start a letter writing campaign to the companies. I'm going to think about it. The other thing I was thinking about is that I want to write a YA novel. I know I am always talking about wanting to write, and never actually writing, but that's what we all do, right? Anyway, I really want to write a novel for teenagers, about teenagers, that's real and honest, and that will be censored in all high school libraries. I'm kidding about that last part, but in order to write the novel that I'm thinking of, it probably will be censored. I just want a book that's about me. A book that the sophomore girls will pass around the way they pass around Go Ask Alice and Speak and The Rose That Grew From Concrete. I just read some of my stories from high school, all really about myself, and I realized that I was a pretty good writer in high school. I was about to go dig out my old journals but I'm afraid they will make me cry. I always had this sort of fantasy that after I died they would be published, but I really don't think that would be a good idea. I really want to read them and see if I could sort of construct some of it into a novel or at least a short story. On the other hand, my second idea is to write a novel about a high school English teacher. But I'm not sure how interesting I could make that, at least if it's just about teaching. Because really day to day teaching isn't that exciting. I guess the third idea is to write a novel that is truely fiction, which would also be a young adult novel. This might be the easiest, but it's hard enough writing about what I know (myself) so I'm not sure how well that would work. I really wish I had done that thing that was on the Internet where everyone was writing a certain amount per day to get to a certain word count. That was a great idea but by the time I went to sign up I was too late. Oh, I finally finished Shopaholic Takes Manhattan. Very cute book! I think I preferred the first one, but this one was not bad at all. I'm reading Emma for school and am really enjoying it. The kids are really not enjoying it. I am on this NCTE mailing list where teachers share ideas and such. I sent in a question about what teachers do when the kids aren't enjoying the book, hoping for some active and fun suggestions for getting the kids into the book. I made it fairly clear that giving up the book was not an option (maybe it would be if I wasn't a second year teacher with a bunch of whiny seniors, but I just don't want them to think they can whine and I will change the assignment). Well, a bunch of other teachers wrote back and were like, "Well, why not just stop? Don't spend this time with everyone miserable." Well, thanks for your help. It really discouraged me. It's not as if I haven't ever changed an assignment--just two weeks ago I realized that these charts we were doing as we read a play together were succeeding only in confusing everyone, so I told seventh period, "You know what, forget the chart! Throw it away right now!" I can let go of my precious curriculum, but I can't let go on this one. I don't know if that's good or bad. I'm getting really fed up with not knowing how to spell. Someone needs to send me some spelling tips or something. I wish this had a spell check on it so I didn't have to avoid using certain words when I don't know how to spell them. I'm feeling a bit grumpy so I think it's time to go to bed!
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