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Showing posts from July, 2012

An apology to a high school English teacher

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You should really all have Mass Hysteria bookmarked by now. www.massiveeffect.blogspot.com This is the square in the center of our neighborhood, convenient to the T (our subway), Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts, a Chinese place and little else of interest. I could never understand the classic essay template. Start your essay with a thesis statement. The second sentence should be a supporting statement for your thesis. The third sentence should be a second supporting statement for your thesis. Then, if you're still following along, your second paragraph should be  exactly the same  as the second sentence of your essay. I didn't know anything about writing at the time, but I knew it was ludicrous (and just bad writing) to repeat the exact same sentence. But our tenth-grade English teacher, Mrs. Gelhar, was old-school. Or just plain old. Her teeth stains had teeth stains. She was a modern-day equivalent of a nun teaching in a Catholic school. Form is all that matters, not the tho

You should migrate to massiveeffect.blogspot.com

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http://massiveeffect.blogspot.com/ Go there now. This park and this view are a five-minute stroll from our new condo. We're a one-hour swim from the Old North End. It's a little hard to believe I ever complained that there wasn't much happening in my life. That was pretty much the case until mid-May. You might have noticed a certain derth of posts. It's been a busy eight weeks: * TW graduated from school! It was a rare and wonderful opportunity I, my parents and TW's parents had to literally applaud all her hard work, which we did not do at the actual graduation ceremony because it was held in Portland's AHL hockey arena. * We went to Florida to see my cousin Bwi-Bwi graduate from high school. I changed her diapers and saved her from drowning multiple times shortly after I graduated high school myself ... in 1995. * We went to my Aunt Flo's (tee hee) cabin in Henderson, N.Y. and did next to nothing for a few nights. * I turned 35, celebrating with a 23-year-