This blog should be sub-titled: a journal of my life in geek.
I get my geek on with things about which I am geeky: comic books, Baseball, Ultimate, science fiction, my favorite bands, books I have read and loved, and Jungian psychology to name some of the most frequently traversed subjects.
I began this project simply as a way to count my T-shirts. I own a lot of T-shirts. But how many do I have? Do I have 365? We shall find out.
When I started this blog, I thought about how each T-shirt means something to me. I bought it for a reason, after all. I set myself the task to post an entry about a new T-shirt every day as a way to simply write something every day, a warm up for writing fiction, which is my passion. Writing is like exercise. Warm ups are good for exercise. But after completing a month of blogging about T-shirts, I have learned that this blog serves as a journal; it documents my life in geek, sort of a tour of my interests in pop culture. The blog serves as a tool for self-inventory, for assessment and analysis of self and the origins of self, for stepping through the process of individuation in catalogues, lists, and ranks.
The blog also made me aware that I have some serious gaps in my T-shirt ownership, and I am in the process of collecting some new T-shirts for several of the great popular culture icons that I truly love. Stay tuned.
I was also a bit surprised that people checked out my blog and continue to check it, read it, and even comment on it. I am very appreciative of this readership. Please feel free to share your thoughts in my comments section. I will respond.
Also, please note that I have moved the original introductory text to the side bar. And now, I present to you the most recent entry of 365 T-shirts: a journal of my life in geek. Thank you for reading.
(Second Update - 1310.24. First Update - 1306.05 Originally Posted - 1304.25.)
Short blog entry today because Grading Robot is deep in it.
I like T-shirts that simulate what would really exist if the thing depicted was a real and not a fictional thing. Expect to see many examples of these types of shirts that simulate some fictional element from comic books, games, movies, and TV shows.
Today's shirt shows off what a Daily Planet newspaper staffer shirt might look like. Jimmy Olsen might be seen wearing this shirt.
T-shirt #41: Advanced Dungeons and Dragons circa 1987
BEWARE: Long meandering, semi-stream-of-consciousness post follows.
I have a confession to make: I bought today’s T-shirt since starting this blog. Some people might consider new T-shirt purchases to be out of bounds, against the blog’s stated intent. After all, I started the blog as a means to count my T-shirts. How many do I actually own? If I were to wear one T-shirt per day, do I actually have a different one for each day of the year? And if I am going to pose such a question, why not write about the T-shirts at the rate of one per day? Because, as I have stated previously, I am NEITHER wearing one, new (previously unworn during the year) T-shirt per day NOR am I necessarily wearing the T-shirt I feature that day.
Though, as a point of order, I am wearing today’s T-shirt as I type this entry. I am currently seated in the back seat of my parents’ new Cadillac enroute to see Steel Magnolias at the dinner theatre at Cornwell’s Turkeyville in Marshall, Michigan because I write reviews for the Battle Creek Enquirer, and I need to review this show.
For those making a habit of following my posts (Hello! Thanks for reading!), this is the first post I have written “offline,” as I am not currently logged into any Internet service, and so I am enjoying composing in my favorite word processor, Corel’s Word Perfect X6. Facts such as these bear relevance to our proceedings here on this blog because if it is nothing else (and I am hoping it is so much more), this blog is really a glorified, daily journal on display for all to see and read (or choose to ignore).
My dad is currently accelerating at a high rate of speed on to I-94 as I try to type on the precariously balanced laptop here in the back seat. Gee, this Cadillac has some serious horsepower.
Okay, enough stream of consciousness and positioning myself in the universe in relation to where and when I am creating today’s missive, and back to the subject at hand: Today’s T-shirt.
T-shirt #40: Indiana University in Hebrew - GO HOOSIERS
Today feels a little milestone-ish. Welcome to 365 T-shirts: Blog #40. After the last few days, I feel a bit like I have been dragged for a few miles by crazed apocalyptic warriors riding motorcycles across the hard-packed wastelands of the desert climates of Australia. (Does Australia have deserts or was that just a movie thing?)
My shirt for today features the word "Indiana" in Hebrew, meant for Indiana University. I received the shirt in the mail last week as a gift from my best friend, Tom Meyers, who attended IU back in the 1990s for law school. Tom has some Jewish heritage, which makes the gift resonate a bit more vividly. During our regular correspondence, I sent Tom links to my blog, and he was inspired to send me this shirt as a gift. Though it's a LARGE, and typically I wear an EXTRA LARGE, just to be comfortable not because I am all that extra or large, it does fit well. And though this is not the usual practice, I am wearing it right now as I type this blog entry.
T-shirt #39: The UFP symbol: United Federation of Planets
This shirt was my first Star Trek related shirt as an adult.
In previous blog entries, I have shared about my affection for logos. And one of my favorite logos is this one for Star Trek's United Federation of Planets, the United Nations of the future, and the overseer of organizations like Star Fleet.
Isn't this a beautiful logo? I have a book published in the late 1970s with this logo on the cover. I think it is the perfect logo for the UFP, even if it is strongly derivative of the United Nations logo.
This shirt was also a gift from my parents, and I am very fond of the shirts I have received as gifts. I have another gift shirt scheduled for tomorrow (which recently came in the mail), and I will fill in more text on the sentimentality and importance of gifts in my life in future blog entries.
This entry is very brief today because I have been buried with a huge homework project, which put me behind with the jobs I do for actual money.
Mainly, I just want to dangle a teaser for the upcoming Star Trek film, which is due on May 17th. There was also a delicious clip in the IMAX feature of the Hobbit for those who managed to spy it there. Our beloved crew (and especially Mr. Spock) are in for quite the ordeal.
Though this movie clip really does not feature the United Federation of Planets in any way, it really fuels extremely well the overall excitement I have for the upcoming JJ Abrams film Into Darkness. I am certain that I am not alone in watching the clips that are released on the Internet with an increased salivation factor and eager anticipation.
Star Trek Into Darkness Official Trailer #3 (2013) - JJ Abrams Movie HD
Enjoy!
While I wait for the film's release, I will be wearing this and other Star Trek shirts with pride.
This one was the first.
If I am going to advertise something, and I am going to advertise something all the time, then it's logos.
It's all about the logos.
-chris tower - 1304.29, 16:21 (a bit late today, school and work, you know?)
Photo courtesy of Liesel MK Tower
T-shirt #38: GODLAND: "Violence is the new black."
Moods.
The T-shirt for today is dictated by my mood.
In my continuing series of providing justifications and rationalizations for wearing certain T-shirts, I want to share a bit about how mood often dictates the shirt. But first a bit about reasoning.
As I have previously addressed, different shirts have different uses. There are "dressy" shirts, which I am wear only when I go out of the house dressed to the "nines." I have mentioned that some shirts are for sleeping, and others are more or less exclusively worn when there's a chance they will get soiled. (I am ashamed to say that yesterday's shirt, T-shirt #37, is one of those shirts. I am so ashamed of this fact that I have "hidden" the fact here rather than in yesterday's entry. It is my logic that those Facebook friends who spot the shirt for Take Back the Night may just click on that post and not this one, and therefore, not be offended by this confession. I could be wrong.) I have described that some shirts fit the season, like my yellow shirts, such as KID FLASH T-SHIRT #30. And back in my media studies teaching days, I often wore a shirt for the musical artist that I was featuring in class that day, such as T-shirt #35: Joy Division. (By the way, I added videos to my former music blog entries, which I should have done in the first place. These can be found at T-shirt #35: Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures, T-shirt #36: Kraftwerk: We are the robots and T-shirt#6: Discipline. I provided the links here as a service to my daily readers, or randomly regular readers, who may want to dial back and watch the videos.)
I had the pleasure of being asked to speak at a rally for Take Back the Night in 2005.
When I spoke, I was teaching a course in media studies in the Gender and Women's Studies department at Western Michigan University.
I was a bit surprised to be asked.
I was humbled and honored to be asked as well.
My ten years of tenure as the instructor of the course Media and the Sexes (should have been called Gender and the Media) was the best job I have ever held. I did my best teaching work in that course. I feel like I made a difference.
T-shirt #36: Kraftwerk: Dedicated to GRADING ROBOT
I am Grading Robot.
Though I have been a college instructor for almost 30 years [gulp: how did that happen], and though I have graded my way through thousands of papers in my career, I did not start calling myself GRADING ROBOT until I started teaching for various online universities in 2009.
Currently, I teach for four schools, and three of them are online schools. With my current course load, I have a maximum of about 160 assignments to grade per week. This number represents a potential maximum, and actual numbers are much lower. For instance, this week I graded two sets of assignments for my main school early in the week. With 30 students in each class, I generated about 60 comments for those sets, but the comments are all much the same and the classroom activity system generates scores for me. Easy Peasy. Posting the comments for the first two sets takes around two hours total time. I had discussion assignments to grade at another school, but these can also be completed quickly. With lower enrollment numbers, I worked through about eighteen assignments for one class and ten for the other class; but not all the students completed the discussion, so actual numbers of comments I must concoct are probably closer to fourteen and six or twenty total. Next up, I had written assignments at the main school, which could be another sixty assignments, but actual numbers totaled only 30. Yes, HALF the students do not submit the written work (at least not on time). Still, this is the most time consuming part of my week. I still have three more sets of written work at the other school to grade by Sunday (though I am supposed to be done by Saturday but so far this has proven to be a soft deadline), and a new set of assignments at the one ground campus school (but this is a class of four people) to grade by next Wednesday. The second school has an extra set of assignments for the week, which will bring my total to around thirty-six assignments, accounting for attrition, to complete by Sunday (as I said, the soft deadline).
And then I get to do it all over again next week!
See what I mean? Grading robot. The only way to survive such a work load is to streamline the process, find ways to speed up the repetitive feedback, and watch the clock. It's all about rhythm, repetition, and a certain tempo. Even so, grading written assignments can be quite time consuming as each student receives individual feedback. Yet, the process is much like Kraftwerk's music. Clockwork grading machine. Machine, Machine.
"We are the robots."
GRADING ROBOT.
So, this Kraftwerk shirt really calls to mind the idea of my work as Grading Robot; this is one of Kraftwerk's robot shirts. (I have another; stay tuned.) The shirt's image is just the kind of thing I love. It would be even better if Kraftwerk's name was not on the shirt. The image speaks volumes.
Damn, I love this shirt.
I have reams of material to assault your senses about Kraftwerk, but today's post is dedicated to how I think of myself as Grading Robot when I wear this shirt (and often when I am not wearing this shirt). In perspective, I am operating on--at best--six hours of sleep. I got up at 5 a.m. this morning to finish grades due at 9 a.m., which sounds easy enough, and it is when I am not so exhausted. But the work is repetitive and only takes a small portion of my brain capacity.
To close today's entry, a few random Kraftwerk facts.
1. My first Kraftwerk album was a used copy of Trans Europe Express, though I may have heard Computer World at my friend Steve's house (Steve Curl as mentioned in T-shirt #32: D&D) before purchasing that LP.
2. I did not see Kraftwerk live until a few years ago at the State Theatre (now the Fillmore) in Detroit: June 3rd 2005. (I updated this date and the pic of the ticket on 1306.13.)
3. I own another Kraftwerk shirt though I do not like it as much as this one.
3.5. Kraftwerk's style of music and live presentation fits my geeky aesthetic perfectly.
4. Since the initial purchase in the 1980s, I have purchased the band's entire catalogue either on compact disc or LP.
-chris tower, 1304.26 11:58
Photo courtesy of Liesel MK Tower
.jpg)
Short blog entry today because Grading Robot is deep in it.
I have a confession to make: I bought today’s T-shirt since starting this blog. Some people might consider new T-shirt purchases to be out of bounds, against the blog’s stated intent. After all, I started the blog as a means to count my T-shirts. How many do I actually own? If I were to wear one T-shirt per day, do I actually have a different one for each day of the year? And if I am going to pose such a question, why not write about the T-shirts at the rate of one per day? Because, as I have stated previously, I am NEITHER wearing one, new (previously unworn during the year) T-shirt per day NOR am I necessarily wearing the T-shirt I feature that day.
Though, as a point of order, I am wearing today’s T-shirt as I type this entry. I am currently seated in the back seat of my parents’ new Cadillac enroute to see Steel Magnolias at the dinner theatre at Cornwell’s Turkeyville in Marshall, Michigan because I write reviews for the Battle Creek Enquirer, and I need to review this show..jpg)
T-shirt #40: Indiana University in Hebrew - GO HOOSIERS
T-shirt #39: The UFP symbol: United Federation of Planets.jpg)
Moods..jpg)
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T-shirt #37: Take Back the Night circa 2005
T-shirt #36: Kraftwerk: Dedicated to GRADING ROBOT
Currently, I teach for four schools, and three of them are online schools. With my current course load, I have a maximum of about 160 assignments to grade per week. This number represents a potential maximum, and actual numbers are much lower. For instance, this week I graded two sets of assignments for my main school early in the week. With 30 students in each class, I generated about 60 comments for those sets, but the comments are all much the same and the classroom activity system generates scores for me. Easy Peasy. Posting the comments for the first two sets takes around two hours total time. I had discussion assignments to grade at another school, but these can also be completed quickly. With lower enrollment numbers, I worked through about eighteen assignments for one class and ten for the other class; but not all the students completed the discussion, so actual numbers of comments I must concoct are probably closer to fourteen and six or twenty total. Next up, I had written assignments at the main school, which could be another sixty assignments, but actual numbers totaled only 30. Yes, HALF the students do not submit the written work (at least not on time). Still, this is the most time consuming part of my week. I still have three more sets of written work at the other school to grade by Sunday (though I am supposed to be done by Saturday but so far this has proven to be a soft deadline), and a new set of assignments at the one ground campus school (but this is a class of four people) to grade by next Wednesday. The second school has an extra set of assignments for the week, which will bring my total to around thirty-six assignments, accounting for attrition, to complete by Sunday (as I said, the soft deadline).
