The Wormlips Scrapbook

Here’s a video of my teacher of my Spanish class for extranjeros. I understand most of what she says, but I can hardly produce a word myself: inconvenient when lost.

Here are two drawings done by two of my young students of their favorite deportes.

I totally blew my class last night. I had no idea what I was doing, and when you’re like that in front of a group, it shows. My only shining moment was when someone asked me about a word I’d written on the board — “tossed” — and without thinking I surprised them by translating: significa “echando.” I can’t remember words I need, but those I don’t are floating around in my brain like sewage in the ocean.

Teaching reminds me of Irish dance competitions. There are you in front of the judges and the crowd, doing a passable if rigid job, when suddenly you forget the rest of your step. You either freeze or you start doing The Pony or something, just to fill the time. All the practice and preparation in the world does not prevent a mind like mine from fleeing under pressure.

I dreamed last night that someone’s horse kept trying to sit on me and I couldn’t get away. The owner wouldn’t help get his stupid horse under control. ¿Que significa?

Sorry to do this to you, but there’s just too much amazing political stuff whizzing around out there for me to let it all fade into my memory.

There’s the exceptional Don’t Vote video that Lulu forwarded me (which Sarah Silverman hopes will go viral, “rampant… like herpes— but for… positive”) and another that Lulu found at boingboing.net about Palin’s brain:

Here’s one my second exhusband scooped me on. Matt Groening just gets more brilliant, unless he’s like Martha Stewart and claims the brilliance of his minions as his own, but I don’t choose to believe that.

And here is some more political commentary, this from the hands of the bearlike, growly Mark Bulwinkle:

My sister, trying to comprehend something, said, “I just can’t wrap my teeth around it.”

According to a Library Journal article by Stephen Abram that Sally forwarded, the Chinese representation of the word for change combines the characters for danger and opportunity. Perhaps they see the relationship between the two as equal. I don’t. This is how I’d draw it, based on my current experience. The round thing, of course, is opportunity.