Dear West Side People, Please Stop Shooting Each Other

Yesterday morning, for the first time in my life as far as I know, I heard someone get shot.

The whole ordeal was surprisingly innocuous. It was about 10:30 I had just begun teaching my 2nd period class when we heard three gunshots. Everyone's eyes in the room got really wide, and we all had the same thought at once: oh shit.

I'm not really sure what I said, but I just tried to keep teaching. Pretty soon we heard sirens, and students tried to look out the windows. "Sit down," I said, and walked to the window myself. There ended up being about ten police cars, a fire truck, and an ambulance outside.

So I finished the lesson and that was about it. I kept an eye out the window and watched the paramedics bring a guy out on a stretcher. He was looking around and seemed okay. The police hung out for an hour or so, putting up yellow tape and talking to people on the sidewalk.

In a way, it seems stupid to be talking about context clues when there are people being gunned down all around you. I think students realize this as well. As I was talking, sirens blaring outside, a student raised her hand.

"Mr. McAlister. I'm not trying to be rude, but someone just got shot." She looked at me. "Are you really gonna keep teaching right now?"

I did, and I suppose I will, at least until bullets start flying through my classroom windows. At that point I'll take a week off, write a new blog post, and go back to work.

Attn:

Kanye West and Joe Wilson are a couple of geniuses. Within a few days of each other, both men managed to garner exactly 100% of news headlines. Never mind the healthcare legislation that will have a direct impact on every single person in this country for decades. Never mind the new iPods. Never mind football and Lady Gaga (GaGa?). News outlets have been covering West and Wilson to an embarrassingly ridiculous degree.

These guys are geniuses because they understand, consciously or subconsciously, that attention is power. Or at least it feels like power, and that's the important thing, really. We as people love it when others acknowledge us by giving us attention. Think about how you feel when people comment on your Facebook status. Think about the rush you get when you catch someone of the opposite sex (or the same sex, if that's your thing) checking you out. You love it, I love it, we all love it. I mean, why else would I have a blog? Why would anyone?

Imagine how it must feel to turn on the TV, or to get on your computer, and hear dozens of people talking about you. This is how it feels to be Joe Wilson right now. People are talking about how he is a buffoon, how he is noble, how he fits into the history and politics of South Carolina, and etc. and etc. He's never been happier in his life.

And Kanye West has geometric figures shaved into his head. A man with shapes in his hair does not care how you feel about him, he just care that you feel something about him. I promise you that Kanye is loving every minute of this.

We are playing right into their hands.

Inexplicable

I am 22 years old. I live in Chicago, and I come from South Carolina.

I have a blue clipboard to which I clip my lesson plans for when I teach a bunch of 14-to-17-year-olds who think I'm the lamest man who ever lived.

Every day I teach, I feel a bit older and a bit less cool. I suppose I started this blog as an attempt to salvage any shreds of coolness I have left. Also to pretend that I am more relevant than I actually am.

For my first posting, I wish to discuss the word 'inexplicable.'

I'm a big fan of Chuck Klosterman, and lately I've been reading his 2006 book Chuck Klosterman IV, which is basically a collection of articles and essays with a novella tacked on the end. As I read the book I noticed that this guy loves the word 'inexplicable' (and its cousin, 'inexplicably'). Seriously, in nearly every chapter he uses the word a minimum of one time. And he employs it to refer to nearly everything, from human behavior to events in music videos to business deals.

Apparently Klosterman feels that reality itself is inexplicable. This is a uniquely postmodern sentiment; indeed, a very few years ago, cultural critics sought to make everything explicable - that is, they attempted to understand and explain away pretty much every cultural phenomenon by tying it into some human need or deeper purpose. Nowadays us postmodern types look around and realize that this is a pretty inexplicable place. Nothing makes sense. American culture is so diverse that what makes perfect sense in some circles is completely insane in others. It is through supreme enlightened self-awareness that people like Klosterman are able to step back, look at all sides of this multi-faceted diamond we call popular culture, and pronounce it 'inexplicable.'

But still. It kind of gets old when it pops up in every other paragraph. And it's a bit condescending, almost inexplicably so. Klosterman's use of the word 'inexplicable' is his Achilles Heel. That little word is the only thing that keeps him from being a truly great writer.

So keep working on it, Klosterman, and one day you might find yourself at the top of your profession. And when you reach the summit, it will be anything but inexplicable. We both know that.