Thoughts Without Words: Summer School 2/3 done

two weeks to go and all is going smoothly as possible. I try to make summer school as painless as possible, mainly by giving the students a ton of time to do the homework in class. We do like 3 sections a day and that's adds up to a lot of homework. It's funny still to see students not take advantage of the free time to do it. Oh well.

I really don't have much to add to this. I will be doing an update on a new favorite show of mine pretty soon and probably another Spider-Man update (love that show!).

I can't believe we are already 5 weeks into our summer vacation? Where did it go?

Who Decides: mid-year albums of the year 2009

Well, obviously my work never unblocked blogger, but hopefully next year will be different. Not going to say much about 09, they were a great class and I knew a bunch of them through classes and it was my last year coaching. So I will simply move on as I do every year.

Onto the topic at hand, this has been a slow music for me this year. I have only heard a couple of albums that have blown me away. As I stated earlier, I am really looking forward to the second half of the year. So what has caught my eye...or should I say ear? (lamest joke I ever wrote on here)

1. The Sorrow - Origin of the Storm: this is classic metalcore at it's best. I'm talking Killswitch Engage good. Best surprise of the year and if KsE doesn't release a great album, this could easily top it.

2. Lazarus A.D. - The Onslaught: ok, so this is a remastered album with A.D. thrown on the end of their name. But the album sounds better than before and clearer, so why not mention it twice?

3. Icon in Me - Human Museum: this is what Mnemic's last album should have been, not that craptacular Passenger. Great sound very reminiscent of Mnemic's earlier stuff.

4. The Beneath - City of Lights: who? That's what I said when I looked at it, but The Beneath is basically a Protest the Hero type band, and I love PtH.

5. God Forbid - Earthsblood: solid, but nothing special

6. The Agonist - Lullabies for the Dormant Mind: sounds very very similar to Amaran in certain parts...that's a good thing.

7. Suidakra - Crogacht: more folk metal...pretty solid.

8. Crimfall - As the Path Unfolds...: imagine if Nightwish had a death metal vocalist you have Crimfall.

9. Darkness by Oath - Fear Yourself: solid melodic death metal album...generic, but good.


That's all that has caught my eye so far. Nightrage has released their album on their Myspace page and it sounds good. I really liked the dynamics of A New Disease is Born, but this one seems to be more straight forward like Descent into Chaos... and that's not necessarily a bad thing either. I expect the album to make my top 10 like their previous 3 albums did.

I don't expect more than one or two of these to make the end of the year list. That's it.

Thoughts Without Words: CSTs and whatever else

So the CSTs are over now and I really have no clue as to how my students did. Some are confident that they passed, while others said they guessed on the whole thing...nice huh? I won't stress about it until August or so, then it goes away for a year. All I can do is prepare them for the test and let the chips fall where they may.

So what else is going on? Well let's see my son is turning one this week. Has it already been one year?

I took a look at the number of postings I have been doing...pretty lame. I really hat webwasher. I can't blog at work anymore. Whatever happened to being able to get our own "teacher" login? Who knows. Work needs to end pretty quick. Having 70% of my students be freshmen has worn on me. I will say that they have matured a bit and are finally learning some responsibility and accountability.

What else? I haven't talked about BSG's finale in detail that much and I won't go into it today, but I will say that the first hour was awesome and ranks up there as a movie in terms of acting and visuals.

Music? Wow what a disappointing year so far. Last year at this time I already had 10 solid albums. Right now? Pretty much zero. God Forbid has a solid album out right now and The Sorrow's Origin of the Storm is also solid. The Sorrow's album reminds me a ton of Killswitch Engage, which is a good thing. Other than that...nothing. I am waiting patiently for the second half to hit. Let's see these are the ones I know of;
Killswitch Engage
Devildriver
Susperia
Shadows Fall
Anthrax
Megadeth
Nightrage
Fear Factory (hopefully)
Arkaea (members of FF & Threat Signal)
Threat Signal (maybe)

Now that is a solid list of metal. What am I listening to right now? Mainly, Shadows Fall, Nightrage, All That Remains, Killswitch Engage, Trivium, and Devildriver.

TV? I am waiting for the second season of Spectacular Spiderman to start up again.

Out for now, who knows when I will post again.

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Now playing: Killswitch Engage - Hope Is
via FoxyTunes