The Gift You Give When You Don't Know What To Give

December 20, 2011

I began drinking coffee as soon as I started teaching.  Originally, I needed the boost to make it through the self-imposed, tortuous hours the position demanded.

Now I drink coffee out of routine.  

It's a prop that lets people know I'm a real teacher.

Also I've developed quite a taste for it.

Buying the teacher a Starbucks card is akin to buying the janitor a new mop.  Or getting a construction worker a very comfortable hard hat.  

The gift shows you care, but you didn't put much thought into your gift choice.

One year, a student gave me Billy Joel's "An Innocent Man" album on vinyl.  She had to really pay attention in class and put in some effort to find that gift.  

  

Starbucks cards, while ubiquitous in the teacher holiday gift baskets, at least show a modicum of forethought and appreciation.

But I'd rather you wrote me a nice card.

Linkage:

Christopher Hitchens on North Korea: A Nation of Racist Dwarves

Here are the two most shattering facts about North Korea. First, when viewed by satellite photography at night, it is an area of unrelieved darkness. Barely a scintilla of light is visible even in the capital city. (See this famous photograph.) Second, a North Korean is on averagesix inches shorter than a South Korean. You may care to imagine how much surplus value has been wrung out of such a slave, and for how long, in order to feed and sustain the militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.

But this is what proves Myers right. Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult: This horror show is in our future, and is so ghastly that our own darling leaders dare not face it and can only peep through their fingers at what is coming.

Kim Jong-un: North Korea's 'Great Successor,' Sports Fan

by Jon Dolan

He also shares his dad's enthusiasm for sports. Kim Jong Il was an NBA fanatic, with a special love for the Jordan-era Bulls. He reportedly had a vast video library of Jordan games and, during a visit to Pyongyang in the late '90s, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright brought Kim an official NBA ball signed by Jordan. (There's a Facebook group dedicated to getting it back.) His hoop dreams even extended to making basketball a kind of adopted national pastime; a 2006 San Diego Union-Tribune story details a full-scale appropriation that includes giving the game a new scoring system: "three points for a dunk, four points for a three-pointer that does not touch the rim and eight points for a basket scored in the final three seconds. Miss a free throw, and it's minus one." The Kim Jong Il NBA connection has not gone un-Tweeted upon: "Breaking news: David Stern blocks Kim Jong IL's son as successor. For basketball reasons."

In Memoriam, Part Two: Kim Jong Il -- Homicidal Dictator, Filmmaker

by Alex Pappademas

Kim Jong Il’s birth was heralded by a swallow, and took place in a cabin at a secret base on top of Mt. Paekdu, the most sacred mountain in Korea; miracles followed, including the appearance of a new star in the firmament, a double rainbow, and a talking iceberg. And he never stopped making magic happen. His greatest film -- and the only one you can watch right now in ten-minute chunks on YouTube -- is 1985’sPulgasari. Il was a fan of the Godzilla movies of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and in some ways Pulgasari — named for the monster, a sort of chew-toy Sleestack/King Koopa amalgam designed by special-effects man Teruyoshi Nakano, a veteran of the original Toho Studios Godzilla films — is an homage to those movies, and a sweeping-yet-idiosyncratic postmodern love letter to the Japanese kaiju genre in general. (Monster-pedants will note that Pulgasari himself, with his lumbering big-shouldered bearing, more closely resembles frequent Godzilla costar Gamera, the flying turtle.) But the movie is also a parable about power and the role of the hero in society, the way a jumpsuit is a shirt but is also pants.

Coaching Women’s Basketball in Qatar
By Clare Malone

Most of them had never even dribbled before—but soon they were boxing out like Dennis Rodman.

(Note: I know there's usually some kind of weak association but the Linkage has no thematic tie to the main post about Starbucks cards.  North Korea was just in the news.)