Competitive Cooking - Wednesday, Period 3 [8/11]

[absolutesnark]

"Hey everyone. Class is going to be easy this week. Figured it'd be okay since most of you have been through an ordeal this weekend." Mostly the easy class was because Piper felt guilty for not being around to help. Not that she knew what had happened until she got back, but still.

"So we're gonna watch an episode of Iron Chef since it's sort of the inspiration for this class." Except for the part with the yelling, the professional chefs, the crazy ingredients, and the big stadium. "Enjoy."

Beaching It [Week 6, Period 5, Wed. 8/11]

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

When the class arrived in the Danger Shop they would find their teacher prepared for them with two bare feet in the sand and sunglasses in place. Yes, he'd gotten dug out of his shallow sand grave since last week. Along with the usual beach equipment, John had also gotten the computer to cough up buckets of golf balls and golf clubs at the class' usual beachy spot.

"So, I'm betting some of you are at least over the whole movie thing since Monday, God knows I am, so we're gonna find a new way to release any residual weekend stress. And no, I don't mean talking about it, do I look like your shrink?" John thought he was too entertaining to be a shrink, but that was only because he'd been made to talk to Heightmayer once too often.

"Anyhow, this--" John lifted a golf club "--is a golf club. You hold it like so and swing it with the intent of hitting this tiny ball really far." John demonstrated, going so far as to hold up a golf ball before dropping it on the green pad at water's edge and taking a massive swing at it. Sure his form could use some work, but he was combining tanning with a makeshift driving range. Perfection was not the goal here. "Great way to relax. Quiet way, too. Of course, you can always say screw it to the golfing and go swimming or suntanning, just uh, try to stay out of range, okay? Good!"

Library [8-11]

[imonscholarship.livejournal.com]

For some reason Dan couldn't focus too much on doing heavy reading or writing today, so instead he decided to spend his shift on his laptop. He started off reading articles on the CNN website and then at some point downgraded all the way down the productivity ladder and started surfing Tumblr. His attention span was low today.

Contact Sports: Building Character (And Possibly...), Danger Shop, 6th Period [8/11]

[cantgetnorelief.livejournal.com]

When students entered the Danger Shop today they'd find what looked like a soccer pitch, only without the goals and surrounded by very high walls. Scattered all around the field were various pieces of athletic equipment: rackets and balls from sports both inter- and extra-galactic, bats, sticks, miscellaneous skis . . . was that a bodyboard? Yes. Yes, it was.

Well. That was what they looked like, anyway; upon closer inspection all of the implements strewn across the grass were made of Nerf foam. Not nerf meat. Except the megaphones; those were perfectly normal.

Anders stood at the center of the pitch with a manual in hand, paging through it and looking somewhat flustered. "Guys, this is not what I had in mind for today, but I can't get the frakkin' Danger Shop to fix it," he said, glaring at the page of the open manual. "I was going to show you Rollerball, not Brockian Ultra-Cricket, but this room's got a mind of its own today."

Or maybe it just hated him. Not that he had any idea why it would.

"This game kind of makes no sense, you guys, but it's what we're stuck with today," he continued, somewhat mortified by what he was about to have to say. "The rules, best I can tell . . . well, I'm not asking you to grow three extra unnecessary legs just for the sake of this class, so we're skipping straight ahead to the main part of this. Which is, basically, grab any of that stuff out there, swing it around, and if you hit someone, run away and apologize through one of those megaphones."

He threw his hands up. "I don't know. I really don't. Just don't actually hurt each other, okay?"

[OOC: The winning OCD shall be the first OCD that wins. Please hold for it. Who knows how that's determined, but who cares? It's up.]

Heroes v Villains | Period 1 | Wednesday | August 11

[flipped-god-off.livejournal.com]

Loki was leaning against the wall when the students eventually wandered into the Danger Shop. Once they'd taken their seats and gotten settled, Loki started talking.

"So, that was some fucking weekend, wasn't it?" Never mind that he'd spent four fucking days in some fucking void and then had to explain that to Metatron who'd just laugh. "I had something else planned for today but who wants to think about good guys and bad guys, after that? I sure as fucking hell don't."

Seriously. A fucking void. He was a goddamn angel, that wasn't supposed to happen to him.

"So, we were going to talk about heroes and villains in politics and that's just enough to give you a giant fucking headache. So, today you're going to the fucking mall. And not just any mall, you're going to Mall of Fucking America. Have fun. Don't ever say I never did anything for you."

With that, the sim kicked in and the students were free to enjoy.

Carpe Diem: Making Your Lives Extraordinary, Period 4, Class 6

[carpe_demon]

Drake had a quote written on the blackboard: "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop to look around once in a while you could miss it."

"A very wise man once said these words," Drake said, "and since you had a rough weekend, I'm going to go easy on you and let you watch an inspirational movie about seizing the moment and enjoying life. Your assignment for the week is to do something fun, something you've never done before. And there will be a quiz."

Teevee for Beginners, Wednesday

[chosehumanity]

"Humanity has always tried to keep in contact," Mitchell started. He looked more cheerful, somehow, like something had relit the fire in his eyes that had gone out over the past few weeks, and especially the past weekend. In fact, he seemed downright cheerful, smiling more. "At least within the tribe. Sharing stories isn't really about fiction, it's about sharing a world, about finding a connection. And there's very little that connects us more than the events that go on all around us."

He was back in the classroom with the couches, but he'd kept the bigger flatscreen TV for this one. "Newspapers started around the 19th century," he said, "In the early 20th century, radio absorbed that task. And as with most things that happen on the radio, eventually, it winds up on TV, although it loaned elements of film newsreels as well. While all the other formats were still barely a blink in a broadcaster's eye, TV news rose up in the late 1940s and became an essential part of the media as we know it. You saw CNN last week: that's the result of sixty years of broadcast news."

"But let's go back in time a bit," he said, gesturing at the TV. "1953. Queen Elizabeth the Second was coronated. It was broadcast by the BBC and meant a breakthrough for news on television: over twenty million people tuned in to watch her Majesty receive her crown. There had never been that many viewers of one program in the UK before. A record amount of TV sets was sold that month, and now the British, too, longed for a regular newscast. It wouldn't be until 1954 until the British had news, but by then the BBC had already acquired a reputation that would last them for decades."

"It took them a time to tussle about the format. You can essentially break the history of TV news down to a couple of blocks of inventions and changes. It's sufficient to say that there was a lot of experimenting in the early days; today, everything is much more streamlined. News is widespread now - the dangers lie in who's controlling it, in the spin of it. What they don't say can mean more than what they do, the items they decide to run and those they don't."

He smiled at the class. "I want you all to present something newsworthy out of your life," he said, "Like a news broadcast. And then I want the rest of you lot to discuss what their spin is."