But from the sound of her new album, Born to Die, Lana Del Rey has, and is. For that reason, she scares the piss out of me.

Born to Die is a thematic cocktail of desperation for true love, sexual misadventure, drug abuse, and an almost fatalistic sense of resignation. Well, it is called “Born to Die,” after all. Musically, Del Rey’s haunting voice conjures memories of music from the 1940′s backed by soft soundscapes that wash over you like the ocean over the sand on some ancient forgotten beach at sunset. The total effect is a cross between Lady Gaga and something you’d expect to hear at a high school dance during the cold war.

Now this is the part where I’d usually discuss a few individual standout songs, but I will refrain in this instance. It’s difficult to isolate them since the entire album flows together like fading memories of a dream, or another life. Therefore, I’ll break the album down in those terms: I remember the part where we were in a slow-motion Disney-fied version of 1940′s Nazi Germany, the part where we explored the remnants of a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas, a flashback to the Winter where everyone died, oh, and how could I forget the massive sword fight on top of the Great Wall of China? These scene slowly changes, but the sense of loneliness and need for human contact never ebbs, even for a moment.

This album is a city without a lot of people in it, somewhat like a warmer Detroit, or Washington DC in “Logan’s Run”. And it all feels like it happened a hundred years ago, but the memories were magically stored in some rusty tin found under a floorboard only to be dug up today.

It could possibly be the soundtrack to Koyaanisqatsi in an alternate universe.

Like any troubled relationship worth holding on to (at least for a while), Born to Die is unsettling, lonely, and seems to go nowhere for long stretches of time. But the ride itself is actually pretty interesting, if not best described as “fun,” or even “ideal.” And probably worth revisiting, but maybe just once or twice.

Verdict: 2/5 Stars, 4/5 if it’s summer and you’re driving by the ocean with the top down with someone you’re having some pretty serious relationship trouble with.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I believe Freddie Mercury is back in the form of Foxy Shazam frontman, Eric Sean Nally. Their latest album, The Church of Rock and Roll‘s first and title track explodes with a confidently unstoppable riff that slams your eardrums like a dump truck backing through your bedroom wall at midnight, and within the first minute of the album they  declare: “Your music sucks, including us. It’s time we clear our name!”

Sure sounds to me like the words of someone waking up after a short detour through death.

Completing the one-two punch, their second track, “I Like It” declares with nothing but sincerity, “It’s the biggest black ass I’ve ever seen – and I like it, I like it!” Fat Bottomed Girls, anyone? Such brazen derierre worship conjures up every certainty that we’ve found our fallen hero. The track recalls the greatest achievements of 70′s and 80′s glam rock with a guitar solo that might kill Queen’s Brian May – and then make him rise from the dead.

These first two tracks of The Church of Rock and Roll are so strong that I was prepared for the greatest album of our time, a surefire breakthrough smash that would establish Foxy Shazam as the saviors of rock that our generation has spent many a night praying for. So impressed was I that I had to stop listening and go back to revisit this tour de force that clocks in at a combined total of just under five minutes.

The problem occurred when I finally got around to listening to the rest of the album.

“Holy Touch” holds on to the religion motif and some of my interest. No doubt a strong track. It certainly keeps up the pace.

But the fire in the rest of the album subsides. “Last Chance at Love” continues to conjure Mercury, but the Mercury of “Radio Ga Ga,” not “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “We Are the Champions.” And that more or less continues for the rest of the album, though “Forever Together,” a take on the challenges of the difficult life of rock stars with some humorous asides is a high point. Well, I guess at the end of the day it’s not funny, because he misses his family.

I guess I shouldn’t be greedy. Having someone with as much talent as Freddie around again to produce one, let alone two tracks to ignite my ears is something I should be thankful for.

For that reason I gladly purchased the album, and would recommend you do the same. After all, the Church of Rock and Roll needs donations.

Verdict: 4/5 Stars

What I didn’t realize at the time is that they are two very sadistic and twisted individuals. Much like the game itself.

The Japanese title for this game, Chömakaimura, translates to “Super Hell Village.”

Yep, you read that correctly. Super Hell Village.

As kid-friendly as ice cream and razor blades.

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Play Here

To say that this game is difficult is like calling radiation poisoning a light tan. Games like Super Mario brothers lead us to believe that saving a Princess is a relatively straightforward matter of jumping on enemies heads and finding clever shortcuts to move ahead quickly.

Super Mario in this game would be like Barney the Dinosaur wandering on to the set of “The Sopranos.”

There are no shortcuts. There is only responsibility.

This, of course, makes it a good children’s game.

Jumping on enemies doesn’t kill them. It kills you. Actually, pretty much everything kills you. Expect to be killed by demons, spikes, drowning, flames, mythical creatures, sorcerers, and much, much more. And while you play as a knight in silver armor, even the slightest hazard will literally crack the armor right off of you, leaving you to run for your life in your underwear.

Yes, you have to run for your life in your underwear. The first time that happened to me I laughed at the absurdity. What kind of sick person makes a children’s game where the protagonist runs for his life in his underwear?

Not coincidentally, this is the last time I ever laughed again.

The Toe Bone’s Connected to the Foot Bone

Fortunately, you have the opportunity to equip yourself with new armor and additional weaponry.

Unfortunately, armor upgrades don’t actually provide additional levels of protection. One hit strips your armor right off your body, even if you are one of the few lucky enough to be able to upgrade your armor from silver to green to gold. In most games, incremental upgrades are lost step by step. Not here.

Logically, anything that would shatter your armor clean off your body does considerable damage to your decidedly under-dressed counterpart. A second hit and your bones are all that are left, falling to the ground wherever you are slain.

Expect to become very familiar with your skeleton over the course of the game.

Oh, and those weapons? Some of them are actually almost unusable. One weapon I find particularly useless is a torch that you can throw. While this may be useful against ground based enemies, it is extremely unwieldy against the hordes of aerial enemies that attack without mercy. Coupled with armor upgrades, certain weapons change their abilities, at times crippling useful weapons or even occasionally turning useless weapons into extremely practical ones.

This is especially frustrating when you carefully upgrade to green armor, pick up a new weapon (there’s holding more than one weapon, and no going back unless you encounter another weapon) and then have a zombie spawn underneath you. Your upgraded armor and useful weapon are snatched away in an instant, to be replaced by crazy man running around in his underwear throwing ineffective punches against the undead.

Oh, and sometimes a Wizard pops out and turns you into a baby.

TURNS YOU INTO A BABY.

Jump Around, Jump Around

If useless armor and a mixed bag of awkward weaponry don’t sound difficult enough, how about we include one more flaw in our hero’s design: the double jump?

When you jump in Super Ghouls n’ Ghosts, you are unable to change direction. This brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “look before you leap.” If you jump from one platform to another, you are totally committed to that jump. The only way you can change direction is to perform a double jump, which is where you may jump again, mid-jump. However, the same rules apply, but after that jump, you have literally zero control over your character.

So when that platform makes a sudden shift you couldn’t anticipate (why would that platform suddenly shift left?) or that enemy shoots a fireball out of nowhere (why can a water creature spit a fireball?), you are hopeless to defend yourself. Complicating matters is the fact that jumps have fixed minimal intervals that are difficult to guide. You will fall into many a bottomless pit simply because you miss the small platform you needed to land on because you jumped from the previous platform a hair too far to the right.

When There’s No More Room in Super Hell Village…

The level design of Super Ghouls n’ Ghosts reminds me of the 1990 film Jacob’s Ladder starring Tim Robbins. This is for two reasons: (1) they are both visually dark and filled with death-related imagery, and (2) they both feature a protagonist going through a whole lot of suffering only to wind up being dead the whole time anyway. (If I spoiled the film for you I have no apologies, you already had twenty years.) I wonder if it’s a coincidence they were released only about a year apart.

It also seems like the moral of both stories is that death brings no end to the suffering.

Hm, another great lesson for the children.

It begins simply enough. You’re walking through a cemetery at night. Par for the course, right? A stroll through a moonlit cemetery, save the Princess, everyone’s happy.

Before you know it, you’re on a haunted boat. Then, you’re in a fiery pit the religiously-inclined might politely describe as Hell. But it doesn’t end there, oh no. It goes downhill from there, because your next stop is a digestion system of sorts where the walls actually rotate 90 degrees and grow teeth.

I could go on to describe the nightmarish scenes you’ll encounter, but I won’t. I just don’t have that many synonyms for “hellish.” If you really want to know, simply fall asleep in a well-stocked meat locker sporting an ample supply of cows hung on hooks, bring a CD with the sounds of people screaming, take two sleeping pills, and hold a controller in your hand. Your dreams will be a good guide.

We have to go back! We have to go baaaaaaaaaaaack!

My favorite part of the whole thing?

Do you really want to know?

It’s when you save the Princess. Not because it’s over, but because it’s just beginning. You have to do the whole thing over again, this time finding the Goddess’ Bracelet.

Unlike Mario, it’s not enough to save the Princess. You damn well better bring her a present, too.

I Hurt Myself Today

In conclusion, Super Ghouls n’ Ghosts is every masochists dream. If Bowser’s Keep seems like a stroll through Epcot in March and Donkey Kong Country is a trip to the county zoo, pop this game in. After a few double jumps into completely unpredictable enemies, accidental drownings, and being set on fire, you’ll want to run away in your underwear too.

And it may not be a bad idea. You will probably require medication.

For the uninitiated, Chevelle is known by their deep bass and heavy riffs strongly reminiscent of Tool with cryptic lyrics that approach the abstractness of At the Drive-In. Their breakthrough hit “The Red” from their 2002 album Wonder What’s Next won audiences by balancing slow basslines with bombastic choruses.

Ten years later, you could use the same description for their newest effort. Sure, there are new lyrics, as pleasantly cryptic as ever. They even include a timely reference to one of history’s greatest con-artists, Bernie Madoff, in their opening track “Face to the Floor.” And while I don’t really understand why or what they’re saying in that song, between the lines “If we own the night then spread it out,” and “I got a taste of the benefits,” I get the gist that they’re really not happy with American consumerism.

Or the title track “Hats off to the Bull,” where lead singer Pete Loeffler somewhat coyly wails “While he’s safe for the moment, guess what he’s learning/ He’s never safe from the crowd,” and later explicates, “So hats off to the bull / No giving up.” What it lacks in clear meaning or comprehensible figurative language, it certainly makes up for in visual imagery, bombastic phrases, and, well, gusto.

If you’re into Chevelle’s sound, their new album brings a few new tracks ready for your playlists. Besides “Face to the Floor” and “Hats off to the Bull,” I find “Arise” to be one of their most focused tracks that’s able to successfully mesh their slowly burning verses with their explosive chorus.

The problem is that those might be the only three tracks to do so. In general, it seems like Chevelle’s underdeveloped choruses hamper the counterpoint that audiences have come to expect, leading to an effort that feels like it just lacks that special something.

Ironically, the track “Clones” (which I’ve heard is a response to claims they sound too much like the aforementioned Tool) is a perfect example of this. When I listen to it, I don’t feel good or bad. I mostly forget it’s on.

Dammit, I don’t listen to Chevelle to tune out. That’s what Sigur Rós is for.

And that’s exactly the problem. It’s solid, but it’s the alt-rock equivalent of elevator music. Pleasant, not something to avoid necessarily, but kind of forgettable.

In short, it doesn’t seem like a bull. It kind of just seems like a regular old cow.

Verdict: 2/5 Stars

For a moment I must detour to a conceptual challenge productivity thinkers routinely try to discuss that seems to lack a common vocabulary for the day to day person: the difference between general plans and specific plans. David Allen refers to looking at life from different height viewpoints, such as 50,000 ft. (your largest life-long goals) down to the ground level with specifics (such as “write a letter to my parents”). Somewhere in my journeys I encountered the idea of strategic versus tactical thinking, which is a my vocabulary of choice. Simply defined, “strategy” is a major plan of action such as “use coupons to save money grocery shopping.” A tactic would then be a specific way to implement your strategy, such as “grab the coupons from the newspaper and keep them on a cork board.”

That said, I’ve found an ample amount of resources online for the strategic and tactical planning for my war on paper. I’ve found advice on scanners, the importance of creating backups, and options for general types of software that can help. My research still has one very fatal flaw I haven’t resolved: how I will digitally organize documents at the tactical level.

Strategically, I plan to use one of my favorite services, Dropbox to store all of my scans and make sure they are available anywhere I use a piece of technology. I will likely upgrade from the free 2 gigabytes of storage to the $10 per month plan for 50 gigabytes, which I expect will be enough to hold two years of scanned documents at a time.

What I haven’t had an easy time planning is the devil in the (tactical) details: the digital organization of the documents themselves. What kind of “rules” will I create in order to properly organize documents? This is a very delicate balance: if I have too much planning, the benefits of the system will be overshadowed by the required amount of time necessary to implement it and it will implode under its own weight. Too little structure, and everything will be disorganized, creating a digital mess as opposed to its traditional counterpart.

A few rules I’m currently toying with:

• The top level of Dropbox will contain only folders. No documents should be in that level.
• The second level will be documents specified by year.
• The third level will be grouped by the most specific organization I can classify them to. For example, TV1 Class would be appropriate; “Work” would be too general and therefore prone to disorganization.
• Fourth levels and beyond will be used to house any kind of grouping feasible should more than two different “kinds” of documents. For example, “January’s Meeting” and “February’s Meeting”.

Having the second level of documents be grouped by year has pros and cons. On one hand, its advantageous because it allows me to archive whole years neatly in a way that would be almost impossible without that kind of organization (or extremely time consuming). On the other hand, it will mean that my top level only consists of two folders at a time, which means lots of time wasted just clicking into the correct year. One alternative I am considering involves creating a “Last Year” folder that will be created each January to house all media existing in the Dropbox, while whatever is already in the “Last Year” folder will be downloaded to my main computer and stored locally to save space on Dropbox while maintaining a safe backup.

It has occurred to me that this system will not merely be a collection of scanned documents, but that it must also become a warehouse for all digital documentation: PDFs, Word Documents, Excel Files, Keynote and Powerpoint Presentations, even some video files. I will therefore begin the development of my system not with scanned documents, but with pre-existing digital media.

Clowns. Spaceships. Bombs. A Princess. Landslides. Hundred-ton weights with wings. The Himalayas. What do all these things have in common? No, it’s not a snarky round of Apples to Apples. It’s the smorgasbord of treasures included in a video game called Kid Clown in Crazy Chase, a 1994 SNES classic by Kemco, maker of other grammatically challenged titles such as Prehistorik Man and Mickey Mouse: Magic Wands! (They also did another favorite of mine, Super Troll Islands. But that’s another story for another day.)

Bow-Chicka-Wow-Wow

This unforgettable entry into the SNES library begins with the fateful abduction of Her Royal Highness Princess Honey from Klown Planet by the evil space pirate, Blackjack. An interesting side note: Blackjack was also credited by Wikipedia as “Dirty Joe,” a name possibly altered for North American audiences due to the fact that pedophiliac themes are generally frowned upon.

Naturally, Princess Honey’s father, the King of Klown Planet, decides to secure the safety of his daughter with his greatest weapon. What? Oh no? He chooses to send Kid Clown instead because, in the King’s own words, “You’re the only Klown klutzy enough for this mission[.]”

The King’s wisdom is perhaps only surpassed by his taste for practical jokes. He is the king of Klown Planet, after all.

When engaging Blackjack’s space galleon, Kid Clown makes his first mistake, accidentally pressing the “Panic Button” instead of… some kind of weapon.

“Oh kid, you are such a klutz,” declares Honey. She then implores, “This could get ugly. Hey you! Yeah, you… the one playing this game. Kid’s gonna need all the help he can get! Are you up to it! Then let’s get busy!”

It’s never too early to break the fourth wall. That’s right. Honey, Princess of Klown Planet, demands that you get busy. She sure doesn’t seem very particular. Pretty forward for a kid (clown).

Oh, this is all the cutscene before you can even start the game.

Everybody’s Drunk

The gameplay consists of an isometric three-quarters view of Kid Clown walking down a path (or, in one of its seemingly limitless five levels, walking down a street) and avoiding a dangerous world entirely indifferent to your pain.

No, not just Kid Clown. You, yeah, you… the one playing this game. You’re going to feel the pain too.

Along the way, you must collect a spade, heart, diamond, and club symbol. You can’t go backwards, the best you can do is stop moving forward. Of course, if you move too slowly, a bomb will explode and presumably destroy the world. (If it didn’t destroy the world, I’m not sure why you couldn’t just… stay away from the bomb in the first place.)

Oh, and if you don’t collect each and every one of the four symbols, you have to redo the level. That’s right, the whole level. Blackjack even sets up the bomb again. It’s kind of like groundhog’s day. A colorful, tedious, nonsensical groundhog’s day.

I’ve also noticed a few interesting quirks in the controls for this game. For one thing, it’s extremely easy to move screen right, yet its more difficult to move left. This shouldn’t be. I also have the sneaking suspicion that the linear perspective is incorrect when Kid Clown moves left or right across the screen: it seems to me like he’s not capable of walking in a straight line the way that he should be. Another thing: he can’t walk backwards, even a little bit. Coupled with the Princess’s, erm, forwardness and the King’s inability to display any kind of solid reasoning when electing his hero for the mission to save his daughter, I can only conclude one thing: Everyone in this game is drunk.

Not Again!

My favorite part? The game literally says “Not Again!” when you fail to achieve the critical but unexplained objective of getting all four symbols. One thinks the expansive opening sequence would explain why we need those things anyway. I suspect it’s been left vague because the programmers didn’t know how to explain the economic importance of stretching out a video game with just five levels to prevent screaming and disappointed children from returning the damn thing because they beat it in twenty minutes.

By the way, if you do get all the suits on the first go, that’s the total length of time it takes to beat this life-altering experience of a game. Twenty minutes. You couldn’t spend money any better than this… not like there aren’t starving children all over the world or anything.

Say Your Prayers

The game begins in a lush green forest. Blackjack plants his bomb and lights his fuse. Kid Clown falls from the sky to face plant with such velocity that I doubt even dental records would assist in identifying this unfortunate being; his skin literally wrapping itself around the ground.

If Kid Clown’s God was merciful, Kid Clown in Crazy Chase would end where it began. He would forgo the Kid’s suffering of being crushed, set on fire, and terrors stranger than should be included in a children’s game.

But Kid Clown’s God is not a merciful God. And it’s all down hill from here.

It’s So Cold in the D

Did I mention that Kid Clown crash landed on a planet with the colorful appeal of a Disney resort but the danger or Detroit? Everything is dangerous. Fire extinguishers explode as you walk near them, blasting your body against a wooden fence. Soda cans inexplicably trap you and eat up precious time. Boulders fall from above, bombs reign down from the skies like the attack on Dresden in World War II. Even pleasant balloons that could hold the mission-critical suit symbols occasionally fall on your head and stop you for several seconds while the bomb fuse moves you closer to oblivion, imperceptible from their more helpful counterparts.

It reminds me of a nightmare directed by Hitchcock on LSD, or perhaps my favorite psychological experiments in learned helplessness. You know the one, where they go to great lengths to teach dogs they can’t get our of harms way, and then put them in a situation they CAN get out of, but they just lay there all depressed, getting shocked instead? Actually, that kind of reminds me of this whole game because I keep playing even though I could willingly stop at any time.

Come to think of it, the game even asks me if I want to keep playing after (an inevitable) game over. You know, it’s a special kind of game designer that is able to capture the essence of stockholm syndrome within a 16-bit game cartridge. Thank you Kemco. Thank you for bringing Guantanamo Bay that much closer to home.

During my first year teaching, I used a simple system in which I had seven identical kits of equipment that included a camera, two kinds of microphones, a tripod, cables, and a clapboard slate. Every time I checked equipment out, I would hold on to a student ID and place it on the shelf in place of the camera. Since all the kits were identical and identically arranged on the shelf, I would be able to tell if a student failed to return all their equipment because certain areas would be empty.

However, this system had a number of flaws. First, if things get hectic or I placed something back in the wrong section, I would be simply trusting that students would return all of their items, and trust is no way to avoid losing equipment. Secondly, equipment breaks. This leads to situations in which I would either have to refuse to check out equipment to someone simply because the item was not part of their kit. (For example, if the tripod from kit one is broken and nobody wanted to check out a tripod at the time, I’d have six tripods on the shelf and still have to deny the student’s request. Kits are assigned per project, so changing kits isn’t an option either.) Finally, I would have to purchase seven of everything, or to create a new kit, purchase all new items that might be costly and too redundant since I’ve never had all equipment checked out at the same time, ever.

I decided I wanted to adopt a barcode scanning system that would speed up process while minimizing the opportunity for errors. I found a number of great solutions, but I didn’t have the thousands of dollars required to implement them.

My implementation began around Delicious Library 2, ($35, Mac App Store, Mac only), a flexible piece of software actually designed to help track manage physical copies of books, CDs, DVDs, video games, and more. At its core is its ability to scan barcodes and then lookup information about the items in question. It can even use your built in or USB video camera to optically look up a barcode and then tell you what item it is you’ve just scanned. That’s right, you can hold up your favorite David Allen book to your camera, and it’ll automagically display its cover art and relevant info in Delicious Library 2.

Of course, I found using the video camera capability to be finicky. While it’s a nice feature for occasional scanning, any intensive amount of scanning will highly benefit from a barcode scanner. After a little bit of searching online, I found a plug-and-play USB scanner ($30 plus shipping, Amazon.com) that worked like a charm. (I have read that not all USB scanners will work with Delicious Library 2, so be careful when you make your purchase.)

So at this point I have the hardware and software ready to scan barcodes. At first, I planned to use the barcodes from the real items themselves, but realized that that particular implementation doesn’t work very well. During my early testing I realized that if I check out two microphones to two different people and then scan them as a return, Delicious Library 2 doesn’t know which user to credit the return to, and selecting that user and scanning the item would confuse the software since it would read that as a checkout.

(Skip the next two paragraphs if you don’t care about the gritty technical lessons I endured.)

My solution is, unfortunately, not elegant, and had to discover a lot of very technical information in order to implement this system. Ultimately, I realized that every item needed its own unique barcode. This is complicated by the fact that, believe it or not, there are actually many different types of barcodes, and Delicious Library 2 only supports one type (at least as far as I can tell). These are called EAN barcodes, and are exactly like the barcodes you find when you go to any store in America.

However, to my consternation, I realized quickly that you can’t just make up your own EAN barcode and type it in to Delicious Library 2. Not all 13 digit combinations are valid because the final digit is determined by a mathematical calculation of the first 12 digits. So, I needed to find a way to randomly generate enough real EAN barcodes, and then find a way to apply them to each piece of equipment.

I developed a three part solution:

First, I feed the ISBN’s website (available here) a series of random and bogus ISBN numbers, set the quantity to 500, check the “Output EANs” box, and hit “Calculate”. Voilà! 500 valid EAN numbers I’ll have a hard time reproducing again, good for 500 pieces of equipment.

Next, rather than buying an expensive label maker specifically to print the barcodes, I purchased standard mailing size labels from an office supply store (about $10 or so) and set up a template in Microsoft Word for that template. I go through and put a description of each item in small text on each label so I don’t forget to prepare a label for anything and know where to apply the label. (For example, “Camera 1″, “Shotgun Microphone,” etc.)

Then, I use this handy website to generate PNG or JPEG images for each and every barcode. I then copy and paste those images into my Word document, taking care as to not use the same barcode twice.

Finally, I pop my labels in to the printer, print up the barcodes onto the labels, peel them off, and apply them to the equipment. It’s then a pretty simple process of scanning the item into Delicious Library 2 and renaming the item descriptions (even finding pictures if you like). I’ve also found that putting a piece of scotch tape over the barcode goes a long way toward preventing erosion of the barcode due to contact with human skin. I know this because I had a nervous student holding a microphone almost totally erase a barcode within the first few days of using this system.

I create several dummy “Friends” to share my equipment with, called “Group 01,” “Group 02,” and so on. When it’s time to check out equipment, I take an ID, put it into a little note-card organizer that corresponds to each group, click on the group account, and scan one item, repeating clicking on the group name and scanning items as necessary. When it’s time to check in, I click on the “Gadgets” area and scan every item, and it decreases the loan count (a yellow number representing the number of items still checked out) for the respective group. When the indicator is gone, I can return the student’s ID. This makes check-ins extremely quick and efficient.

Since adopting this system, I’ve gone a step further and actually created laminated production passes, each with their own unique EAN that get scanned out as well. Students always give them back, and I’ve caught a skipper or two whose group mate had to throw them under the bus because otherwise they wouldn’t get their ID back! And should a student swear they returned all their equipment or passes, you can simply rescan all items in question, and they will disappear should they have not been read correctly the first time (a rare occurrence).

All in all, the system was difficult and time consuming to set up, particularly without a guide like this. However, since I have implemented it, I haven’t lost a single piece of equipment, and my process has saved my class several minutes per class per day, more than worth the time I spent setting everything up. And since the barcodes are covered with scotch tape, they’re durable and I won’t have to make any adjustments for the foreseeable future. All it took was an obsolete computer and less than a hundred dollars worth of supplies.

This may not necessarily sound like a bad thing. After all, we live in a society that values money and its rewards. As a teacher, I’ve even had to personally rebuke the notion that I’ve either (1) made a dumb choice for a profession despite being intelligent or (2) that I’m of little value to society at large due to the size of my paycheck. Am I crazy? Do I have something against money? Who wouldn’t want to make money? Am I of some moral or mental defect to find the question generally yucky?

No.

The very question is predicated on the idea that money is my motivator, with the resulting implication that money is inherently a virtue. I disagree with both notions. It reminds me a parable I heard as a child that goes something like this*:

A greedy farmer is desperate to have the largest lot in the land and outshine everyone around him. The devil hears his plea, and makes him an offer: when the sun comes up, the farmer will have until sundown to set up a fence around all the land he would like. If the fence encloses a complete area by sundown, all of the land will be his forever.

The farmer accepts, and toils all day long under the hot sun. In his greed, he refuses to slow down to eat. He won’t stop to drink. He continues to build his fence, eventually covering a plot of land that extends as far as the eye can see. As the sun begins to set, he fears it may not be complete in time, and so he doubles his pace, continuing to work as the weather chills.

The farmer completes his fence just as the last rays of sun slip below the horizon. The devil appears and congratulates the farmer for a job well done. As he does, the man collapses to die in his own exhaustion.

In the end, the only land he needed was a two feet wide and seven feet long, six feet below the ground.

The moral of the story is that greed can be an all-consuming flaw. Like the farmer, it’s all too easy to lose sight of what’s important, particularly when greed becomes involved. Greed is also the next-door neighbor to aggression, and the enemy of cooperation. After all, how can I share when everything I give you has to come from my share?

If that sounds like an overly-dramatic read on the question, here’s a more practical take: If the money is the best thing you have to offer, what’s that say about the task you’re asking me to complete? Is it a unique and rewarding challenge, or perhaps an opportunity that is worth the responsibility?

Or, more likely, are you waving money at me to secure my permission before I ask any questions?

Most likely, you’re relying on the fact that the question is actually an absurd one: who doesn’t want to make some money?

History is full of examples of people driven by ideals and passions rather than money. Edison. Einstein. Gandhi. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Of course, it also has its share of those that were.

Bernie Madoff comes to mind.

*Forgive me, I couldn’t find the original story or author.

Musically, Fallen Empires is a slight departure from their established fare, yet nothing that rocks the boat. Synths are used more liberally than previous efforts, most notably in “Called out in the Dark” and the bass line in the album’s title track; the latter almost makes me feel like I’m caught between “Blade Runner” and a Coldplay b-side.

Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.

In addition to sounding ever so vaguely more ethnic than previous outings (I even heard the word ‘Ireland’ in the lyrics to “Lifening”), Fallen Empires seems to have shed the more outrightly pop-oriented leanings of  the breakthrough Final Straw. You’ll find fewer hooks and more atmosphere; less pleading and more contemplation. This seems to be in line with their music, which I can only imagine was written when it was very, very black outside.

Lyrically, Fallen Empires is an interesting piece. Certain phrases and imagery sprawl across the album: three separate tracks refer to either “new,” “vast,” or “fallen empires,” respectively. There’s the track “Called out in the Dark,” while the title track of the album begins, “You called my name in the dark,” and another track, “These Distant Bells,” declares “This dark spell you’re under / has you dumbstruck by the gate.” But the consistency of imagery adds a layer of depth as it is used to enhance the exploration of diametrically opposed attitudes: there are songs about life (“Lifening”), death (“This Isn’t Everything You Are”), love gone wrong (“In the End”), and love gone right (most of the remaining tracks). What did you expect? This is Snow Patrol, after all. Using the same words to describe different ideas is something of an intellectual treat to find, if you’re looking for that in music, anyway.

Fallen Empires has its flaws. At times it lacks the focus necessary to become more than pleasant background noise. This is a shame, because it’s not that anything is specifically wrong with the album; it merely falls short of having enough musical diversity or weight behind the repeated imagery to make its meaning clear. It would be easy to mistake the lyrics as being recycled or a product of laziness, or even worse perhaps, for them to actually be lost in the slow drifts of Snow Patrol’s arrangements and consequently go unrealized altogether.

I suspect that at the root of this whole album is the idea of family. I find that to be a very nice idea. Whether mourning the loss of a loved one in the aforementioned “This Isn’t Everything You Are” (one of the more impressive, if not concise, tracks) which explores the meaning of life in the face of death or the final track “The President” which rather sweetly ties up themes of leadership (and the imagery of empires) with the importance of humility with family, Fallen Empires is an album rife with the exploration of close personal relationships, their pain, and their solace.

It’s a nice idea, for a nice album.

“Nice” would also be the word best suited to describe my final impression of Fallen Empires. Nice, but not quite so nice.

Verdict: 3/5 Stars

But then it got worse. Assignments came piling in- all kinds of notes and homework I had to return just added to the stress. So my problem got worse and worse. It lead me to be forgetful, and it made my grades fall. Sure, I was smart enough to do better, and my frustrated parents frequently reminded me of this. But they couldn’t help my addiction.

For years I struggled, until I finally sobered up in the new environment of college. Surrounded by new people and a new environment, I was strong enough to break free. But now that I’m a teacher, I’m afraid I may be slipping back in to my old ways.

I am addicted to paper.

I’ve always had a hard time managing it. In my formative years I couldn’t manage it. I tried binders, folders, stuffing it into backpacks and lockers, ignoring it, embracing it, all to no avail. My grades in high school weren’t very good, I was a ‘B’ student when I graduated.

College has very little by the way of paperwork, and to this day I still have almost every paper I’ve written and every note I took, because I kept everything organized and documented electronically, where I can find a single document just by searching for it with my Mac’s Spotlight feature. As a teacher though, I find myself getting more and more paper that I have a hard time managing. It’s not the information I have a hard time managing so much as it is the raw amount of processed deceased organic tree matter and the inherent difficulties that relate to its organization.

For example, I find it incredibly easy to find notes and essays from college because I have a document named “Doc Outline” inside a folder called “Techniques in Documentary Filmmaking” inside a folder called “Spring 2009″ inside a folder called “College Work” inside my “Documents” folder. This is much more useful and flexible than the real-world counterpart of the “folder” – that is, the drab yellow folder made of processed bark that can only stretch to limit and could never, ever, contain so much paper as would be necessary to convey all the data I accumulated at college.

And even if it could, it would be a mess. And heavy. And where would I put something like that? What a mess to even consider.

I suppose I am a resident (or victim) of the digital village. I was born in 1987; I stand with one leg in the world of the typewriter, the other in the land of the iPhone. I possesses what I’ve heard referred to as a “transactional memory” in that I remember where I store information rather than the information itself, a phenomenon blatantly apparent in any high school across America today, yet I also value the storage of information inside my own head.

It is perhaps because of this split nature that I am able to relate to my older co-workers while also impressing my younger students with my adept handling of “the Internets”. But when it comes to paper, it becomes increasingly clear that I’m playing a game that I can’t win.

It’s either me, or the paper. And damned if it’ll be me.

Therefore, RESOLVED:

I shall make 2012 the year I adopt an alternative to the paper world: where I refuse to allow my desk to become cluttered with countless staff-development handouts and feeble copies of tedious paperwork that allows a student to enter the nurse’s office or accompanies them to the dean.

Be it resolved that by the end of this year, I will have adopted a policy, leveraging the power of information technology upon the old technology of information (read: paper), magnanimous and glorious in equal part: SCAN AND SHRED.

Also, I will floss every night this year. That’s the other part of my New Year’s Resolution. But that would make for an even less interesting read.