another other joke

this guy is burn with a rare mutation that causes his skin to be on fire all the time, constantly. his parents notice when he's like 3 years old that his fingertips are abnormally hot. And over the course of a few months, his fingers and then eventually his hands are just on fire all the dang time. it doesn't cause the boy any pain and doesn't seem to do any damage to his skin. so the only thing the parents can think of is covering his hands in flame retardant oven mitts and then preventing oxygen from reaching his skin. Years go by and the condition keeps spreading and by the time the boy his 15 years old he basically spends his whole life in a space suit type contraption that prevents all exposure to the outside world. well, the upside is that he's a medical marvel and he allows himself to be studied by scientists and does a big media tour and makes enough money so that by 25 he can buy his own island and move away from his society forever and just pay people to deal with him and not ask questions.

now by this point he lets himself by exposed and wears whatever he wants, custom clothing that won't melt or ignite, and everyone accepts it. one day he decides to go golfing and his caddie meets him at the first tee and notices something peculiar. he asks the man, "sir, why are you wearing two pairs of pants?"

"In case I get a hole in one."

ice machine

what makes a house a home

another joke

It turns out that when you die, what really happens is that you go under the Earth as a skeleton and you live for the rest of eternity, until the Earth is engulfed by the Sun, as a skeleton doing one job for the rest of your days. And the way it works is they line up the new crop of recruits and they go down the line and they ask you what job you want to do. It's usually about six skeletons at a time.

This crop of six skeletons is standing in a line and the Skeleton Task Master goes down the line and points to each one and they say the job they want.

The first one goes, "janitor."

The second one says, "racecar driver."

The third one says, "scientist."

The fourth one says, "arsonist."

The fifth one says, "ditch digger."

The sixth one says, "musician."

And then after they do this they go back down the line and the skeletons say what they need to do their job.

The first skeleton says, "mop and bucket."

The second one says, "car."

The third one says, "microscope."

The fourth one says, "gasoline and matches."

The fifth one says, "shovel"

The musician skeleton says, "trombone."

I like that it's not a satisfying punchline and if I was telling it out loud I'd make a part in the middle where they each say why they want the job they want.

joke #1

There's a pirate captain on his ship in the middle of the sea. Now, the thing about pirates is that a lot of people think they were criminals but what you need to understand is that the governments that controlled the oceans and trade and all of that, they were the real criminals. These people who ruled by arbitrary terms and conditions acted in ways that benefited only themselves--forsaking entire nations of people. People who could have advanced society by leaps and bounds if they weren't impoverished by the whims of the elite. So yeah, pirates are just people who see the strings that move the system.

Anyway, there's this pirate and he's living this miserable pirate life in the middle of the sea. Grimy sweaty crew of rejects and ogres and hooligans and galoots and scrimshaws and ramrods and nasty smelly dudes all drunk because water wasn't clean and crusty and farty and covered with sores from scurvy because they forgot why scurvy happened for a few hundred years. This captain is suffering terrible conditions but he really believes in what he's doing. People shouldn't be able to do whatever they want to whomever they want because they cling to this facade of power. If you have the courage and the ability to throw a wrench in that, to make it difficult for these people because you are another human being and your needs shouldn't be ignored, you should act. So that's what this guy is doing. He's looted. He's terrorized. He's made people with power feel unsafe because that's how you should feel when you're being evil. 

And his first mate comes to him, staggers to him because got all kinds of health problems and his teeth are falling out and he has spittle and blood on his mouth and he chokes out that there's a warboat off in the distance heading straight for them and there's no way they can get away. Their ship's too fast.

And in the captain thinks about this for a second and he just says, "get me my red shirt." And the first mate does that.

And then they have a terrific battle with the warboat. The pirates do the unexpected and they charge at the warboat and they hide the fact their weary and hungry and scared and they turn that into ferocity and fight like animals and throw skulls at the warboat because they're pirates and they have a collection of human heads in a barrel for just such an occasion. And they fight dirty and are all around unpleasant because, again, they aren't by into this notion of civility and puts down 99% of the population. And eventually, the pirates suffer some losses but they are victorious. And the warboat decides, this isn't worth, this is too gross and uncomfortable and they surrender.

So the pirates plunder the ship and celebrate and they get just enough to keep surviving and keep up their reputation and it's a good moment. And the first mate is drinking celebratory grog with the captain and asks him, "Captain, why did you have me bring you your red shirt?"

And the captain chuckles to himself and takes a big swig of grog and swallows it and says, "well, I know it was going to be a hellacious fight and if I were to get injured and start bleeding, I didn't want my crew to see the blood and worry about me. We're scurvy dogs and all we should know is fighting. That's the way we get through this."

Just then a crew member bursts into the captains quarters and says, "Captain! The entire navy was just spotted off the horizon. There's no way we can escape!"

The captain puts down his grog and looks at his first mate and says, "bring me my brown pants."

local kids make a bridge

warming up

there's two older girls at camp who are pretty shy and don't really talk to anyone other than each other. last week I tried engaging them in conversation and just tried to include them whenever possible. they aren't in love with camp or anything but I can tell I'm making progress because today one of the girls was teaching another girl (a younger camp) how to make me fall to the ground by striking the back of my knee. And then she tried like 4 times over the course of the rest of the day to make me fall down with sneak attacks.

so that's progress.

place

I like afterschool, not because it's the most fun but because I can wrap my head around what it is as a program. And I can see myself making that program better and taking more ownership of it and stuff. 

And then I liked old camp because it was super nourishing for the soul. like you got to spend all your time with amazing people and create a community that functioned better than anything I'd been a part of. 

new camp is a dope job. it's really cool. but I don't know if I've found a larger purpose in it yet. I like my coworkers a lot but we still all go home at the end of the day. And I've been given a lot of trust and freedom in my role but it's not really leadership. I don't need a larger idea to enjoy the job but it's just something that occurred to me. I'll keep thinking about it. 

prune prower

today i asked the kids to use leaves rocks and sticks to create a map of field camp in a field. 

i said the prize for the group that made the best map was a mystery fruit that i had purchased with my own money

the prize was prunes 

later at lunch a kid came up to me and said "andy, can I go eat all the prunes."

i said " no way dude the prunes are too powerful for your tiny frame."

he said "no they're not i eat 5 peaches a day."

and then later at the end of the day i asked him how many prunes he ate and he said 10.

grateful

I'm grateful for the very light rain we've been having. It's been pleasant. Being outside is excellent.

I did a full school year of afterschool

my first time doing one continuous year. and I'm coming back next year.

I'm really proud of it. I'm proud of the kids and I'm proud of the program. I think my big takeaway, the big lesson I learned was that the program worked best when it was student-centered.

Yesterday we were supposed to sit down and start planning for the next year. And what the official program is concerned with is coming up with THEMES for the kids. Like "Willy Wonka" or "The Rainforest" and we're supposed to dress up everything and then also teach the kids math somehow. I don't know. I'm not about it. It's a teacher-centered approach.

Because it assumes you have all these humans who are devoid of knowledge and interests and motivations and unless you dress everything up and put something in front of them, then they are just going to be empty vessels awaiting information and fun. That's silly. I'm casting it in the worst possible light but that's just silly.

I was talking to my coworker and we focused on things like "how can we make the lighting in this cafeteria less harsh?" and setting up the environment for success.

The kids already like things. They're full of ideas and motivation and interests. What they have a harder time with is structure and organization. So anyway, my guiding principle for the next year is listening to what the kids say and do and then framing it and organizing it in a way that is presentable and memorable.

Taking pictures, doing write ups in the word of the bird, making art out of their art, showing interest, adding extra facts/info/context, getting supplies to enhance it.

yeah!

today I met a 5 year old

and I tried to explain to him how Liono from ThunderCats used his sword to give him "sight beyond sight"

he was quite charming.

kickball

we've been playing a lot of kickball at afterschool and we have one girl who always plays and she holds her own in kicking and fielding. she's an awesome kid.

anyway, today a boy kicks a line drive straight to her on first base and she catches it. her team is going in to kick and another boy who is watching says "wow, I'm surprised she caught that."

And I decide to give him a hard time and tease him and say "watch your gender assumptions there, bud."

I didn't think anything else of it but like 5 minutes later he comes up to me and he's clearly thought about this issue and says, "well, I'm not racist because then why would I always say that my sister is better than me?"

This happens a lot actually. The kids at my school don't seem to distinguish racism and sexism. Or maybe they're afraid of saying sexism because the sex part.

I like that he was concerned about it though. Being called it. That was interesting.