I've been really into the lyrics to the song "waiting for superman" by the flaming lips. here they are

Asked you a question
I didn't need you to reply
Is it gettin' heavy?
But they'll realize
Is it gettin' heavy?
Well I thought it was already as heavy
As can be

Is it overwhelming
To use a crane to crush a fly?
It's a good time for Superman
To lift the sun into the sky

'Cause it's gettin' heavy
Well I thought it was already as heavy
As can be

Tell everybody
Waitin' for Superman
That they should try to hold on
Best they can
He hasn't dropped them
Forgot them
Or anything
It's just too heavy for Superman to lift

also "hungry freaks daddy" by the mothers of invention:

Mister America
Walk on by
Your schools that do not teach
Mister America
Walk on by
The minds that won't be reached
Mister America
Try to hide
The emptiness that's you inside
When once you find that the way you lied
And all the corny tricks you tried
Will not forestall the rising tide of
Hungry freaks, Daddy . . .

They won't go
For no more
Great mid-western hardware store
Philosophy that turns away
From those who aren't afraid to say
What's on their minds
(The left-behinds of the Great Society)

Mister America
Walk on by
Your supermarket dream
Mister America
Walk on by
The liquor store supreme
Mister America
Try to hide
The product of your savage pride
The useful minds that it denied
The day you shrugged and stepped aside
You saw their clothes and then you cried:
THOSE HUNGRY FREAKS, DADDY!

i've been trying to get through "The Hundred Languages of Children" and i've been reading it inconsistently. It's translated from italian and it has a lot of substance, but i'm getting impatient with it or something.

i am pretty into the Reggio approach of teaching. It comes from a town in Italy called Reggio-Emelia. The founder was a man named Loris Malaguzzi (i may be slightly off on the spelling of this stuff). The basic premise behind this teaching is that relationships, and community through relationships are the ultimate goal. relationships between the children, parents, and teachers are considered equally important. Through close-knit relationships like this, the idea is that schools can have a better sense of how to address the interests and curiosity of the children, and can create more effective lesson plans based on those insterests. The way this is done is through documentation of the children's work in all forms, pictures, transcribing their dialogue, saving their drawings, recording sound and video, etc. The materials used are supposed to always be open-ended and are many times natural. plastic commercial toys are not ok. the idea behind the choice of materials is that the textures are varied and interesting and the usage of the materials promote thinking and ideas "outside of the box." The "bible" for this approach is a book called "the hundred languages of children."

i've started trying to make a computer game in the style of the old lucasarts adventures like "monkey island" and "sam and max hit the road" and stuff. the name of the program is "adventure game studio." they have a website, the program is free, and as a free program i think it's incredible. i animated a character in the program by taking pictures of this action figure of obi won kenobe, i'm pretty excited about it.

sometimes i make music on the computer. for that i use "garageband" which is a program that comes with the mac, and "fruity loops" or "FL studio" on the pc.

there are a couple websites i visit chronically, or at least monthly.

epiacenter

this is a website about a type of motherboard made by VIA that's low-power and smaller than normal motherboards. i'm really into the idea of computers being more mobile and existing in people's living rooms and stuff... these motherboards are pretty expensive and i don't know if they are very good. but i've been reading about them on the internet for like... 2 years.

lik-sang

this website has all this japanese video game stuff on it. i.e. you can order things for video game systems that aren't available in the u.s. it also has stuff for older video game systems, which i am more into than the newer stuff because i think the games were fresher and more creative.

newegg

this is just computer stuff. i like to look at it and see how much things cost, and whether computer stuff is getting any cheaper.

oh, there is this 100 dollar laptop being developed for poor kids around the world. the name of the group making it is "one laptop per child" or olpc. i think it's cool because it goes against all the bloated technology that is constantly developed for new computers.

There is a new movie coming out by the members of OutKast, Andre Benjamin and Antwon Patton. I am totally excited about it. It takes place in a prohibition-era speakeasy. the two of them have a club and it's threatened by gangsters who are trying to take it over. it's totally a metaphor for them trying to keep hip-hop fresh and creative and trying to fight the gangsta rap influence. OutKast is one of my favorite groups of all-time, and this movie looks really good. it's called idlewild, it has terrance howard (howell?) ving rhames, patty labelle, and macy grey in it. terrence howard is the main bad guy i think. it's the directoral film debut of OutKast's music video director, Brian Barber. Their videos are really awesome, and have really cool dramatic shots in them. so i hope this movie is awesome.

I also want to see "Snakes on a Plane." It's this cheesy B-Movie spoof type of thing that already has a huge cult-following on the internet, and it hasn't even come out yet. Samuel L Jackson is in it. They were going to name the movie something else and he made them keep the name "Snakes on a Plane" because he took the job simply so he good be in a movie with that title.

In Star Wars, it was also Samuel L Jackson's idea to have a purple lightsaber.

Fearless Freaks. It's a documentary about the flaming lips. it's inspiring and awesome.