Amandoo’s Handle of Realitumtum

i told a friend who has five classes right now that he doesn’t have to do the reading. he looked at me like i was crazy. so i might have made it through years and years of not doing reading, or just skimming, or speed reading, but right now i’m stuck. i have a huge comprehensive exam coming up on basically everything i’ve ever learned in grad school, and i don’t remember a lot of it. probably because i didn’t read, sometimes didn’t do my homework, skipped a few too many classes (hurts when they’re only once a week), and sold back the books online.

(by the way, if you’re bored like i am, go to here and read this cute picture book: “The Other Side” by Istvan Banyai on Michael Salamon’s blog)

i have a study guide and i’m going over stuff, but i should have been doing this for months. i just don’t know. i have to pass this test. so i’m procrastinating to write about it. of course. i didn’t really study for the French exam, but that was different. this is a lot of theory and hoo-hah that i just don’t remember. some of it applies to me so i remember that, but the other stuff does not interest me. oh well, i guess it’s good to have it all somewhere.

so i’m putting it on another blog site i have to hopefully become rich and famous from someday. i’m not rich right now. but last night i did eat a nice rich crab-filled salmon. it was delicious. and it was with some girl friends and then it turned into a big party.

also, my best friend is engaged. and a good friend and cousin of mine as well. so many engagements like boom boom woh! it’s very exciting, but also reminds me a need to really think about that whole thing, relationships, whether i want or don’t want what from who ha!

I was very excited to read about Undercover restorers fix Paris landmark’s clock. Reading news about France takes me back to those wondrous days when I lived there (over 4 years ago now). It’s touching to see that people care enough about preserving their homeland cultural identity that they form a secret society to do just so, risking their safety and donating hours of time.

This story also made me think of the beloved Catacombes, a must-visit underground site in Paris. I happened to sneak a (forbidden) photograph or two:

The Catacombes are creepy and cool, and some French folks are scared to go there

Well worth the risk. I would risk a lot for something I cared about, but I have few cultural pushes (besides political hope in Ron Paul) in America. I do care about Stones Throw, though, and tried to join their Street Team, but they said they “the guy who does the street team stuff usually doesn’t respond to all notes - when he’s got enough, he’s got enough”. I think that is a little bit sad, even pathetic. I live across the country and already demonstrate extreme skill at promoting Stones Throw out of the goodness of the love of my heart.

Whatever. I will continue to share what I care. I like France and I like the underground, so above suffices my day’s work for promoting culture.

to all y’all beloved of mine who cross this blog, happy thanksgiving. but what are the chances?! who knows, it could happen.

i did a lot of work this week, all random jobs, and it paid off. but now i’m about to go spend it.

i have lots of ideas and stuff. lots! i am a good person. but i forgot what i was going to blog about. that should send this blog right down the tubes of destruction.

enjoy your turkey, pies, cranberries, stuffing, and everything else. sing some carols, look at some photos, but don’t honk and be a roadrager. please. drive safe, sober, and of sound mind.

peace out y’all! (ron paul!)

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i’ll grace you with a picture of the ‘family’ from thanksgiving:

qu’est-ce que je peux dire? kuh pweeje deer? i was giving a French lesson to some children the other day and told them about the cultural differences- France does not have Halloween, or Thanksgiving (ooh, ahhh). French children go to school on Saturday. I think this is where I started to lose them. They don’t care too much about culture like that. anywho. the kids. family. holidays. we used to to have the best thanksgivings ever. but it was mostly because everyone was there. times have changed. we don’t have all the players we used to, we are all different players. i have had a thanskgiving away from my ‘family’ before. i’ve had several. and some of them were the best times of my life. i love a good family thanksgiving holiday i’ll take two helpings of humorous dysfunction and all, but i will also take a several day extravaganza of crazy awesome krunktop times that could result in a lot of memories. we’ll have a wii there too. i like to psyche myself up before a situation where future reminiscings could be created might occur. i shall report on this after the turkey has been slain.

to start with you must watch this video:

and then watch this video:

i bet the majority of you are laughing and not feeling at all bad about it. but mostly because- karma- she was asking for it!

i would laugh at myself a lot if that happened to me. i love people’s youtube comments on this for the most part. wow.

The Praxis I was easy. If you want to teach and think yourself competent enough, you should have no problem with it.

The Praxis II? I got an interview with Amandoo herself, who took the Praxis II Content Area Knowledge French style, and she let me know what is up with the Praxis II.

Praxis II Information: Subject Area French

Interviewer: What can you tell us about the Praxis, a few hints for those preparing for a content area language test?

Amandoo: First off- Know your verb tenses, but don’t obsess over them all: Which expressions get subjunctive? Get subjunctive with it. Past anterior subjunctive? Not so much. There were only six or seven tenses, not 14 like I studied in 501 French Verbs.
Second- Know grammar in English and French: You do not have to memorize all of the names of the different verb tenses in English like I feared you would have to. But you do have to know what direct and indirect objects versus subjects and nouns and adjectives. Maybe that sounds simple, but it can get tricky with two languages and it is something that is overlooked because not many people know English well if that is their first language. Foreigners learn it more thoroughly than we do usually. So review that up.

Interviewer: Did anything surprise you or was anything unexpectedly difficult?

Amandoo: Yeah. What the Historical Culture?!: Sure, they warned me there would be a culture section. But the example question on the Praxis ETS site asked “When would a French family most likely have dinner?” And the answer was obvious: anyone could choose between 3pm, 8pm, or 11pm. Obviously 8pm. That is like common sense French culture that everyone knows. These questions were somewhat out of control. Do you know what resulted after Joan of Arc did her thing? How about the first piece of literature written in English? French speakers- do you know the French?

Interviewer: Good point. Any other helpful tips?

Amandoo: You do need to know your language pretty well: At first it kind of seemed like someone who hadn’t majored in French or spent a year abroad could take and pass this thing. But, even though it seemed kind of easy (ie they weren’t asking dozens of questions about which form of verb would you use for this, is the subjunctive used for this this or that? Like in the SAT II French test), but, they did ask a lot of questions that either a) didn’t seem too tough because I have such a good listening ear now after being exposed to real French speakers and modern spoken French! Anywho, I think they do ask enough stuff that at the lower levels the lack of global vocabulary extensive comprehensionnesss, like every new level of knowing grammar and idiomatic phrases and things, eventually you get the idea no matter even if there is one key word you’re unfamiliar with. You still get it if you got it (the whole language).

Interviewer: I have no idea what you just said, but I think you are basically saying that you do need to have a very firm grasp on the language.

Amandoo: Indeed. I have taken well over ten years of French, so…

Interviewer: Did it challenge your knowledge of French? Any tips there?

Amandoo: In the end it’s not that hard, put it this way: For the past almost three years now I’ve been taking nothing but education courses. Other colleagues (certifying for Spanish) in the Education program had to take Spanish courses, but I did not have to take French because they said I had enough in college. Well, one of my Spanish-speaking friends just so happens to be from Mexico and they told him he needed more Spanish courses- just a little money & politics gimmick, I believe. They have a big Spanish program at my school. Yeah. So. I haven’t been regularly practicing French for a while and I still did fine after reviewing a few things for three or four days.

If you want to study, do not waste your time and money on buying a Praxis II study guide. Unless you have a lot of money and don’t care about the poor helpless trees out there in the environment.

Just make use of the French manuals you have, coupled with listening to French news, or some other communication with real live French people, and mostly- use an awesome site like LiveMocha.com to really get a good review. Jeez. Join LiveMocha people!

Interviewer: Before I leave you, just throw out a few specific tips for the French test takers.

Amandoo: Sure! Here’s a list of things I remember being uncertain about.

Elision- what’s an elision? better know that too, as far as grammar goes you do need to know random tricks

Joan of Arc- what resulted from her actions?

Holidays- What day is la Fete de Travail (I think it’s May 1st) or what do they do on le premier mai?

Random history- what did a troubador help spread? what was the importance of chanson de roland? what did the huguenots bring to France? what is chartres known for? and stuff i knew, like what is the flower of France or what book is this quote from (the quote about only being able to see with the heart from Le Petit Prince).

I don’t exactly know how you would study for all of that. You could read up on stuff, but you really just have to know a lot of random stuff. I did fine on all the other parts besides the cultural one.

Interviewer: Thanks, or should I say, merci, Amandoo!?

Amandoo: No, you shouldn’t. But you’re welcome.

Interviewer: I think I’m ready to take that Praxis test!

Amandoo: You already did, foo. Get some sleep!

Would you like to do something to help humankind this Thanksgiving while spreading freedom and good cheer?

Check out the Ron Paul Thanksgiving site and join in on the fun. Here is an excerpt and below is the full site text:

Please join in this grassroots movement and spend the days before Thanksgiving collecting canned goods on Ron Paul’s behalf.This will send a message to Americans and the world that personal responsibility and initiative can never be replaced by tax-funded redistribution programs, which are always plagued by severe bureaucratic waste. Help tell the country about Ron Paul’s hopeful message: that freedom REALLY WORKS!

Check out ronpaulthanksgiving.com!

The November 5th “money bomb” was AMAZING and helped Dr. Paul get a lot of well deserved media attention. This Thanksgiving, let’s help Ron Paul get TWICE as much attention while giving hungry people a warm Thanksgiving meal!

Every year millions of Americans spend the Thanksgiving holiday hungry. Despite the countless billions of taxdollars being spent on various federal welfare programs, our nation’s poor remain hungry.

Please join in this grassroots movement and spend the days before Thanksgiving collecting canned goods on Ron Paul’s behalf. On November 21, the day before Thanksgiving, thousands of Ron Paul Meetup Groups across the country will deliver the food they’ve collected to a local foodbank (affiliated with America’s Second Harvest) in Ron Paul’s name.

This will send a message to Americans and the world that personal responsibility and initiative can never be replaced by tax-funded redistribution programs, which are always plagued by severe bureaucratic waste. Help tell the country about Ron Paul’s hopeful message: that freedom REALLY WORKS!

This Thanksgiving, let’s give many hungry people something to feel thankful for!

Here is a video that gives an impression of what it was like:

If it doesn’t give you my impression, I will simply say this. I didn’t write a review for the concert for a long time (revising 12/4/07) because I didn’t know what to say. I guess I felt like I had a personal investment in Busdriver and what I say about him. However, now that some time has passed and my initial mixed overall feelings are less fueled by the past’s memories which are now not so painful. I’m rambling. I’m trying to say I’m not so personally jazzed about the rapport between Busdriver and I. Especially after meeting the Stones Throw crowd, they were nice and I didn’t even have to hype my validity up.

The show was alright. I loved Daedelus’ stuff and it was cool to here more of Antimc’s solo work. But it seemed to me that Busdriver was trying to joke around/make fun of the venue (given it was kind of crappy and there were technical sound difficulties at first), but he started making fun of stuff without establishing any real relationship with the crowd.

And then when he tried to joke that we shouldn’t be proud that Philadelphia is the number one most dangerous city (it’s now Detroit at this point), I feel that’s when the crowd got violent. Violent, or disillusioned, or disinterested.

He did some cool stuff. But when he dropped the microphone and couldn’t find it, even though people told him exactly where it was- TWICE- you really have to start wondering about his speedy ethics. Can he not yack so whack? What’s up with that?

Whatever. Peculiar venue, mix with weird crowd, and throw a seemingly PMSy Busdriver into the mix, and add a sprinkling of my past bias, and you come up with a review that shows up on my blog two months after the fact. Whereas I was uploading videos from Stones Throw concert the night of.

Peace to Busdriver as an artist. Peace. Just maybe play a few more good songs next time.

The man says his music sounds like: “Hopefully sleepy kittens, more likely nervous bunnies…”. I just straight up love his style.

Last night at the Khyber he did a sweet show, making excellent use of his two fifty six monome.

I got some great videos:

We chatted about everything from kittens and bunnies to old vinyls, Deep Forest, and Stones Throw…

Little did I know that on his first album he created the sample Madlib used in Madvillain’s Accordion (the most krunktopin song on madvillainy) It’s called Experience.

Little kids love him,

His wife of 50 years loves him,

And I certainly love him. Like a grandfather, or a father.

His wife talked for about 25 minutes because his plane was delayed. She was sweet, genuine, humorous, and real. It was very fun to hear inspiring and touching stories.

He made eye contact with Mrak and I several times and I gave Carol Paul a Fresh Cut Salads cd!

I even got some videos. I will add those tomorrow or by this weekend realistically. It was an exciting weekend.