Jabberwocky for 2001 October 31

I've had a lot of trick or treaters so far. I've been through four bags of Snickers bars. My first one was little Peter Handy, dressed as Bam-Bam, who came over to my neighborhood especially to see me. I went as Mary Kay with Pink Hair to work and to Tarjiay today, but ditched the costume this afternoon because I was itchy, and now I'm wearing sweats. That's even scarier. Rachel bought a Dracula costume for the Gretel, and she was helping me answer the door for a while until she got the idea that the kids had c-a-n-d-y in the bags and I had to put her in the back yard. I don't have any decorations up or anything, but I'm having a good time grading papers and answering the door. I missed all this when I lived in the country; I'm glad I don't live there anymore.

We had a very interesting discussion in class about the grammatical implications of the difference between the imperfect tense in Spanish and the present perfect tense in English.

When I was in college, there were reference books for sale in the bookstore: 501 Spanish Verbs, Fully Conjugated In All The Tenses! 501 French Verbs, Fully Conjugated In All The Tenses! 501 German Verbs, Fully Conjugated In All The Tenses! If one were not sure of the conjugation, one could look it up before using it in one's term paper. There is no English equivalent reference book, but it occurs to me that one would be a nice security blanket for ESL students.

Bakersfield College is no longer going to have ESL students, instead; they will be known by some tongue twisting and very forgettable acronym which supposedly will be more PC.

Some of the kids who came trick or treating -- the same ones who smashed my pumpkin-- were eating pomegranites, which they said they had obtained "from a tree." I wish I had a pomegranite. It occurs to me that I know where a tree is, hanging over a fence into the back alley. Maybe I'll take the dog for a walk and go liberate one, unless it's the very tree those kids already raided.

There is evidence of ancient folklore that Eve ate a pomegranite in the Garden of Eden, not an apple. Probably unbeknownst to the Church filmmakers, who nevertheless picked a pomegranite tree for the starring role in the temple film [but glued plastic fruit to it.] I'm talking about the old temple film that they don't show anymore, not the current one, which is a vast improvement, though nowadays the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is played by an actor pertaining to the genus Malus. Shrubbery, shrubbery. So many of our beliefs are culturally filtered.