January 18, 1965
Today's the last day for my library book I lost. I'll never find it. It's very boring in school now - all we do is review for Mid-Years. I went to the library F period and goofed off for a while. I didn't see V today. I usually do. Rats! I got an A- on my project in English. I expected a B-. Who's going to complain, though. The latest poop is that this is Mr. V's last week here - aw! I will miss Mr. B, though. He's cute.
January 18, 2006
We were on some kind of staggered schedule where A period was first on Monday, second on Tuesday, etc. Each day comprised five periods and lunch. Our five academic classes each met four days a week, but gym was twice a week. So the periods were A-F, with one period dropped each day.
January 18, 2023
Somewhere out there is a dissertation about high school class scheduling schemes. I have waged my own personal war against the tyranny of thought packaging. Where is it written that an academic course must be contained in X number of containers over the course of Y weeks? Who decreed that the optimal film length is between 90 and 120 minutes? One of my professors used to tell a joke that ranged from twenty minutes long to nearly an hour, and the longer he took, the funnier it was. I regularly enjoy Indian films that run well over two and a half hours, and some of my favorites are between three and four hours long.
I have written two books - histories of clothing and gender - fewer than 500 pages, total, maybe 400 if you eliminate the references. Supposedly, I am writing a third (the proposal was accepted in late 2019) but I keep chopping it into smaller and smaller pieces. Life is short, they say, and they are right sometimes. I have time for a three-hour movie or an hour long joke (well-told, of course). But I do not have time to write another 200-page book.
Oh, hello! Another poem just walked into the room.
Empty
Clever people fill page after page.
Words tumble from their heads, polished and perfect.
Even turned upside down,
There is nothing in my head but crumbs.