bpseaton's New Writeups

wallet (poetry)

2010-12-04T15:23:14Z

A wallet is a funny thing,
All full with scraps and cards and (sometimes!) cash--
A leather square for safekeeping

Life's small, important things beneath your ass.

Either/Or (review)

2009-09-07T06:57:28Z

ARGUMENT:

I suppose that everyone has their own favorite tragically-dead, beautiful, terrible genius singer-songwriter. There are certainly enough to go around. But if Nazis had my parents and forced me to pick my all-time favorite, Iâd have no problem telling them Elliott Smith. And if I had to pick an album, thereâs no questionâIâd pick Either/Or.

I first encountered Elliott Smith through my high school girlfriend. I think Smith would have appreciated that relationshipâit was sweet, strange, beautiful, and ultimately, a total mismatch. That was ten years ago, and Iâm a very different person now than I was then, particularly as far as my musical taste goes, but Elliott Smith has stuck with me, and I canât imagine ever getting sick of Either/Or.

Those familiar with Elliott Smithâs catalogue will (I hope) agree that this album falls neatly into…

transcript sections of classroom discussion on literary criticism (idea)

2009-05-27T07:39:15Z

BACKGROUND:

I am currently undergoing New Mexico's poorly-organized intern teaching licensure program. This program ideally gives people with bachelor's degrees in something other than education the opportunity to become fully-licensed teachers quickly without having to go through the touchy-feely process of earning a teaching degree. So I'm trying to get my license in secondary language arts.

Last December, my wife's boss (my wife teaches biology and chemistry), an incredible six-foot lesbian amazon of a woman (think Jane Lynch, but 6'3"), asked if I'd be interested in teaching an advanced literature course. The school is a magnet school for Albuquerque's blossoming film industry, so I suggested a course on advanced story theory, using film as a medium. She told me to write a syllabus. I wrote a syllabus. She loved it. I called it "CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES: THE HOLLYWOOD MODEL." She decided that wasn't sexy enough, so she retitled it The…

My NY i (poetry)

2007-06-14T18:29:58Z

It was a great hazy time
Spent spinning off with
Strangers in a paradise of
Broken glass, trash, citydebris,
Blasted cab commotion, emotion,
And occasional loss of primary motor function.

Do you remember?

It was late-to-class spastic
Sick all-nighter madness,
Gratuitous haywire hormone
Havens of badnasty bliss.

Do you remember?

Paul with paws drawn wide
Cocked black socks pulled up and
Fifty-seven rubber bands on one wrist
Drawing on the other with a
Black…

Pop art (thing)

2006-08-01T19:24:54Z

Pop Art is an artistic movement that began in England in the mid-1950s. Although the movement still thrives today in countries like Japan, most critics would say it peaked sometime in the mid-1960s. The movement is closely philosophically related to Lowbrow art, the Op Art movement, and Dadaism (and was in fact called "Neo-Dada" by some); in Pop Art, the pretension of abstract expressionism is undercut in favor of a juxtoposition of the epic and the common, often making use of familiar images in extreme ways (for example, turning a Campbell's Soup can into an iconic, almost reverential image). Pop art is (in the words of British Pop-Artist Richard Hamilton) "popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business."

The term "Pop Art" was coined by Lawrence Alloway in 1958, when he wrote about the artwork of Hamilton and several other London-based artists. Hamilton's collage work …

mirin glazed salmon (recipe)

2006-06-23T17:37:30Z

This is a simple dish that is easy to make and uses relatively few ingredients. It doesn't take too long to make, either, which is a huge help if you're stoopid-busy like me. Here's whatcha do:

STUFF YOU WILL NEED:

Salmon steaks. Four of 'em. I usually buy two big ones and chop them ever so gingerly in half with a large cleaver, leaving me with four steaks, each about 5 oz.

THE GLAZE:

One cup of mirin. This is rice wine. Sushi vinegar also works well. Sushi vinegar is rice vinegar with a little sugar, which is nice in this dish. If you're using straight rice vinegar, I would advise adding a pinch of sugar to it, but you can certainly go without.
Ancho chili powder. Ancho isn't spicy, but has a wonderfully gentle earthy flavor that goes well on pretty much anything. You are going to want AT LEAST 2 tablespoons for this dish, but feel free to add more liberally.
Powdered ginger. Yeah, you could use fresh stuff,

…