that's what's so illogical, about being a Smurf.

i teach English to people in their late 20s-late 30s at a few companies. one of them in particular is pretty anally retentive about making sure their employees learn to communicate. the other one... sincerely does not give a rat's ass what we do. the only catch that is the class is geared towards people who already have a semi-intermediate proficiency; apparently the priviledge of blowing off work for an hour and a half requires a TOEIC score of at least 550. occasionally i do a "real" lesson for them to keep up appearances. most of the time we just sit around and bullshit, and that seems to suit everyone just fine.

we talk about sci-fi movies a lot. everyone at this particular company has a weird semi-obsession with Dragonball (hey, it's an IT firm). anyway, we got to talking about Avatar, the new Alice 3-D movie, and the trend towards 3-D movies in general, and how people thought mainstream films with sound would never happen... and then how they thought films in colour would never happen... and then the conversion from film to video... but we all know how that turned out. so the question is, would the day come when 3-D is the norm?

as this is a pretty astute group of guys, one of them very astutely pointed out that the genre that carries innovation to the mainstream... tends to be porn. this realisation, of course generated endless giggles from these 32-year old high school boys about how cool 3-D porn would be.

maybe i've been teaching in this kind of atmosphere for too long. it occurs to me, on occasion, that i could have all their asses handed to them in a sexual harassment suit if this class took place in the US. but the only reaction that even remotely registered was "well i just don't think porn has the budget for 3-D..."

if they want to watch (3-D?) porn and talk about it in class, that's all well and great to me. as long as they're using english. i just find the whole institution so illogical. i mean... let's say you're hungry and don't have any food. aaaannndd, for whatever reason, food is not available to you at that certain point in time. if you can't eat, why the hell are you going to pop in a DVD and watch other people eat??? or open up a magazine or internet site and look at pictures of food?

anyway, that was the bit of the Tao of Chris that my pervy students enjoyed last Monday. not that they registered a word of it, since they were all too busy contemplating the idea of 3-D porn. and probably Dragonball.