Strangely Like Oulipo

So, I’m taking a break from a paper that’s almost done. Something distressing happened the other day, and while it’s sort of looking resolved, I’m still having trouble focusing. It’s interesting, though: I’m sort of performing a narrative analysis of a couple of independent creative projects that my students did in some classes I taught back in 2008-2009. The narratives of their creative works can be read not just as a generalized social critique of TEFL and its impact on Korean society, but also as an encoded, implcit critique of particular gaps in mainstream classroom TEFL practice, as well as …

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Rikki-Tikki-Tavi & Stephen Harper’s Unceremonious Assrape of Toronto

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi | Viral/Other | SPIKE.com As I mentioned to some friends, my dad once let me stay up late to watch this on CBC. I have no idea why it aired so late, though I suspect we were getting shows on Toronto time — thus an hour or two later in our timezone, which was a constant annoyance. I wasn’t supposed to tell my sisters, as they had gone to bed and would be mad if they knew I was allowed to stay up… even though I was older than them. But I figure after recounting so many of Kipling’s …

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Communication is So Important

A friend was bringing me up-to-date on his life, and for reasons I won’t get into, this story came to mind. Parts of it are second-hand, but I’m going to just tell it the way I’d tell it verbally, that is, without differentiating the bits that I know are true and the bits that are hearsay. And of course, because I’m doing that, I’ll leave out the real names, and take some liberties. I think the couple of people might be able to guess who I’m talking about already know the story, so it’s not like I’m ruining someone’s reputation. …

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