Cuspid

Spent Thursday and Friday and much of Saturday building a closet in my bedroom. I learned some things in the process, and am pretty satisfied with the result. Today I took the test that goes with my TA workshop online. Astonishingly, the test violated just about every pedagogical principal they tried to get across to us in the workshop. Misleading and poorly-worded questions, a very lopsided representation of the range of topics (almost half the questions regarded how to write a syllabus, which constituted only one of the six presentations) and a whole bunch of questions on the minutiae of sexual harassment regulations (which was not even mentioned anywhere in the workshop). It was a timed test, fifty questions in twenty-five minutes. I have no idea how I did, and felt in the end as if some sort of very strange joke was being played on me.

We are winding down the weekend by watching Robin Hood, the Errol Flynn one, on the television. Trying to explain to my seven-year-old who the bad guys and who the good guys are just drives home to the family how much damage W has done to our nation, our values, our world. The usurper declaring Robin an outlaw, Robin's use of outlaw tactics to restore the rightful sovereign...were I making the movie today I would have Prince John munching on Chex Party Mix and watching baseball on TV. I would have his advisers be corollaries of Rove and Gonzales. But the analogy breaks down: who is Robin Hood? Who's the outlaw? And King Richard the Lion Hearted...who's he?