Doug Goodman

My High School Teaching Career

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Not for the first time, last night I got really jealous of my daughter because of the kinds of electives she can choose. She will be going into high school next year, so Mrs. Badass and I were reviewing my daughter's coursework. We also started looking at high school classes in general. Some of the electives she can choose to take included a half-semester study of Shakespeare or Horror or Science Fiction/Fantasy Literature. Makes you want to go back to high school, doesn't it? Horror Lit has to be the coolest class at Clear Falls High School, hands down. There is no way it can't be. Right from the point where you enter the classroom, it will be cooler because the Horror Lit teacher will have the best classroom decorations. Can you imagine? Instead of that wavey border that seems to be en mode with teachers everywhere, the Horror Lit teacher uses a border with bloody blades and axes and every weapon ever used in a Stephen King book. Instead of busts of Shakespeare, the Horror Lit teacher could just have fake heads hanging from the ceiling. And instead of posters inspiring kids to read or stay off drugs, the Horror Lit teach (cause he's too cool to be a teacher) would have posters of Freddy and Jason. (Okay, not technically literature, but still horror.) The possibilities are endless!

Maybe your high school sucked and you didn't get to take interesting classes. I went to Lubbock High School, the coolest high school on the planet because on Fridays you got to take cool classes like Star Trek movies and Meditation. I can personally attest to Star Trek Movies as being much more interesting than Algebra I or US Government. A class like Horror Lit would fit right in at LHS (obviously it would have to be a full-time classroom and not just for Fridays).

This all got me thinking, though. Maybe it's time to be a teacher. I am generally against it, but if I was in charge of Horror Lit, nobody would ever want to take another class. You would begin with Poe (duh!) and read The Pit and the Pendulum, The Casque of Amontillado, and The Murders of the Rue Morgue. Dracula (double-duh!). How you teach a Horror Lit class and not include Lovecraft is beyond me. The Dunwich Horror, The Thing on the Doorstep, and The Mountains of Madness. Richard Mattheson and I am Legend. Probably the biggest decision is which Stephen King book to read. I know that critically it is a no-brainer. You read The Stand. But I think in recent years, The Shining is starting to become more appreciated for its deconstruction of a modern family and for being the ultimate "haunted house" ghost story despite being located in a hotel). Of course, I have always been partial to Carrie, and it might fit in better with the rest of the collection.

Think of how you can present the texts to students. You can talk about the roles of women in Horror from Nina Harker in Dracula to Ruth in I am Legend to Carrie or Wendy Torrance in The Shining. Another thing that would be cool to talk about is narrative. Carrie, Lovecraft, and Bram Stoker's Dracula all use the same kind of journalistic narrative. You can even compare that to modern horror cinema with its shaky cams and "found footage" movement. Other possble topics are how tension is built, or the use of "gore," which is more of a late-twentieth century thing.

I can already hear a high school kid in the back room complaining that this course has no zombies. Come to the front, son, and listen to the teach. There is only so much schedule in a half-semester class. I already have three books on the list (although I am Legend and Carrie are short books). I don't have room for zombie books. But I am the coolest teacher ever, so I think I have a solution. I am going to steal something from my old World Lit teacher, who made everybody in the class at one point in the semester give an oral presentation on some topic. (Mine was Metallica, which I could talk about for at least 2-3 hours.) For the Horror Lit class, the only stipulation would be that it has to be related to horror. So the student who wants to disect World War Z or the Walking Dead? Be my guest. See, I'm the coolest teacher in the world, homie! Four shizzles out of five.

Okay, so now that I have described the absolute coolest class in the world, my question to you is - how would you teach a Horror Lit class and what would you assign for the reading list? Or what class would you teach instead?

Grey Days, Bright Books?

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:20:00 +0000

The days have been mostly wet and grey and dreary for the past couple of days, the kind of weather for book-reading. My recent reads have had that same kind of dreary grey feel to them.

Princess of Mars -- Probably the brightest of the bunch, but like Edgar Rice Burroughs' other famous book, Tarzan of the Apes, it has a depressing end. (I assume that like most of the Tarzan movies, teh ending will be changed in the upcoming John Carter movie.) Thankfully, Burroughs wrote more books.

Stargazing Dog -- (Spoiler alert!) This graphic novel by Takashi Murakami, is kind of like a Charlie Brown special, if after everything Charlie Brown went through, at the end of the special, he and Snoopy died. It is a beautiful story, but also kind of a downer.

Black Hills -- One of Dan Simmons' more recent books, and one of my favorites. Unfortunately, the main character feels responsible for the death of most of the people around him and feels responsible for the death of his people, so also a bit of a downer. The dialogues between Papa Saha and the ghost of Custer are some of the most memorable scenes of the book, and I wish there was more with the two of them in it. For a horse of a different flavor, I recommend Custer's Brother's Horse, by Edwin Shrake.

So, my question to you: do you know of any uplifting, feel-good books? These are all very good books, and I am glad to have read them, but I am ready for something a little brighter right now. Do you know of one? Or maybe just a funny, clever book? My Kindle is waiting. (In the meantime, I am reading the Burroughs follow-up, Gods of Mars.)

Placenta Potpourri

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:10:00 +0000

Okay, so I did something odd today.

The team is working on certifications, and our certification requirements direct us to use 15g or less of source material. Since by circumstance I happen to have the other trainer's scent items, I decided to break out my trusty food-turned-dead-guy measuring scale and find out how much these items weigh.

Unfortunately, most things weigh a lot, and it is hard to measure the amount of placenta juice used say, in a placenta brick (quikcrete + placenta (placenta replaces the water)) or a placenta log. So to be as scientific about it as I could, I decided to just measure it all and see what happens.

The results were not as good as I hoped. WIth all the new scent materials we have acquired since November, only a few (less than 10% is my guess) fit within the range. In the interest of full disclosure (because what is a blog if not full disclosure?), I have a lot of bloody gauze/rags that fit in that range. However, a couple of years ago I spoke to some more knowledgeable people than me, and I asked them about blood because it was (at the time) our most abundant resource. They said that blood is generally frowned upon because it does not create as much scent as other source types. For certification, they recommended bone or flesh. To bring it all full circle, this is why I completely ignored all my "bloody tissue" samples that fell in the <15g range.

So what went so wrong uring this little exercise in grotesquery? I had been doing everything right, but then I got ambitious. I decided to OPEN a placenta jar and pour the liquid into a children's medicine measuring cup, which I could then weigh to find out how full it needed to be to make 15g of scent. I opened the Smucker's jar. At first there was no problem. About five second later the scent went nuclear. It was stinkin EVERYWHERE. And I mean everywhere, as in Gary Oldman screaming E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E in The Professional. Man, that was pervasive. I thought smelly diapers were bad. But year-old placenta? That is a whole new level of stench. Good Gawd! That is some potent potpourri!

So if you are every going to work with the stinkables, and especially placenta, I highly recommend doing this work outside, either in the garage or in the backyard. I got lucky and didn't drop any, but if I had dropped that jar and placenta soaked into the concrete...well, I think I'd be committed to not selling the house for another couple of years.

Tuesday Night Training

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:00:00 +0000

One of the things that came out of the HRD seminar I attended in November was the desire to spend more time focusing on handler skills. So with the other senior HRD member on my team, we started adding Tuesday night handler trainings. I have really liked how these training sessions have progressed because of the impact on the dogs and the handler.

The kinds of skills are things like detailing, which is getting the dog's nose to follow the hand. This is very useful in vehicle and building searches, but can also be used for small evidence searches when there is not a huge area to cover. Believe it or not, something as simple as where you stand can affect a dog's behavior. For example, if you are standing in one spot while the dog is working an area, and you gradually move to your right, your dog will start to move in that direction, too. So on Tuesday nights we develop some of these skills (and many others).

Another advantage to the Tuesday night trainings has been the opportunity to work in different conditions. See, team trainings are usually weekend training sessions, usually staggered between mornings and afternoons to create the most opportunities for people to come out. I really like the system, but you can't train in the dark when the sun is out! Usuall when we did night trainnig, it was a special once- or twice-a-year event, usually held in the summer when it was just too stinking hot to train during the day. But now the team is training lights out (you are welcome for the bad pun) on a weekly basis. This has also allowed us to train in more inclemental weathers like rain, fog, and gusting winds, and sometimes like this past Tuesday, we get to train in all of them at once! That's Texas for you.

A key element to the Tuesday night trainings has been that they are purely voluntary. These sessions are for handlers who want to work their dogs a little more. (And who doesn't? Cadaver dogs are cool!)

Note: Create bumper sticker saying "Cadaver dogs are cool!"

There is nothing against anyone who doesn't want to attend. Whether or not the team did Tuesay night trainings, I recognized the need to work my dog a little more each week, so I was getting everything out of the trainings that I wanted. I have had to leave early before, other times some people couldn't make it out, but we always have enough people in attendance to train a least four to five dog teams.

In January, the HRD teams tweaked the Tuesday night training, and we have really reaped the benefits from it. What we did was make handler trainings complement weekend team trainings by doing the same kind of problems. On Tuesdays, the problems are not blind, and on the weekends we do the same problem, but blind. So for example we did a couple weeks of elevated training, where the source is placed up high. We started at a lower height that our dogs were more comfortabe with (I think 4 feet). All handlers knew exactly where the scent item was hanging (i.e., not blind). Then on the weekend, we mimicked the same problem (hanging, 4 feet, always in a new location), but the handlers couldn't know the location of the hanging scent item (i.e., blind). This has been great for learning the different behaviors provided by a dog in different situations. It also builds team confidence, which is vital to any working dog team. The handler has to trust that the dog is doing the job as trained.

Unlike team trainings, there are no flankers and no additional work, so the trainings are always quick and finished. They usually take one and a half to two hours max from wheels stop to exiting the park. If your team meets once a week but has several team members who want to pursue Tuesday night trainings, I highly recommend it.

Aliens and Zombies on Black Friday

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 02:35:00 +0000

"Black Friday is like the zombie apocalypse. Either you're one of them, or you're inside hiding, hoping your loved ones haven't been trampled by crazy people." My wife posted this to her Facebook wall with the request that I come back alive and not undead. But really, my Black Friday experience wasn't all that bad.

Okay, so I heard that a woman trying to buy an X-Box pepper-sprayed the people around her like she was a wolf defending a recently killed caribou. And I have heard of people getting mugged for toys/money while out on Black Friday. But I have been Black Fridaying it for the past 4 to 5 years, and I've just had a different experience. It seems that instead of thugs and psychotics, I see mostly ordinary soccer moms and dads out looking for presents. The frantic behavior doesn't seem to kick in until after Black Friday when people realize they have shopping to do and that perfect ImagiNext T-Rex that they really wanted to get their nephew for Christmas is completely sold out in the continental United States and won't be shipping from China for at least another month. Yeah, that was me five years ago. I decided to start shopping Black Fridays or get used to looking for alternative gifts.

The crazy part is the before, actually. That's because on Thursday I sift through a bunch of Christmas lists and compare them to a bunch of flyers and look for the perfect fits. My relatives who have visited us on Thanksgiving can attest to this erratic behavior, and I freely admit it. But I gotta strategize. It's not just about which store to go to, but when will the toy be available? 9pm? 10 pm? midnight? 5am?

Once I have my strategy, it's time for a little nap (usually augmented by turkey and wine). Then I get in the car, grab a few Throwback Pepsi's (no corn syrup, just glorious sugar), and head to Toys R Us.

Call of Duty: Toys R Us

The line at TRU was lo-o-o-ong. It stretched a couple of blocks, and there were probably three to five hundred people in line. I got there a little early, broke out the cellphone, and started keping tabs on the progress of the final Texas/A&M game. A store member came around and let us know that Toys R Us would open on time and people would be let in 50 at a time.

I overheard people worrying about lots of things in line. They worried about how long they would be in line, whether the item would still be on the shelf, and whether or not all this was worth it. Nobody was worried about the alien invaders who took over the local Toys R Us, killed its crew, then sent out unbelievable Black Friday deals that would lure all the townspeople to the store, where they would stand in line and wait to be let in, 50 at a time, and then the aliens would slaughter everyone as they came in looking for game systems and remote-controlled cars. Or maybe that was just my overactive imagination hopped up on sugar and caffeine.

An hour later, I was inside and hunting for a couple of sweet deals. Everybody there was very nice and cordial. The lines weren't horrendously long, I wasn't killed by aliens, and no zombies tried to eat me (if they tried I would have beheaded them with a nearby Nerf sword). The only downside was I couldn't get a cart, so my arms were very jello-y (real word) by the time I got to the cashier. Otherwise, I left TRU having saved $70.

Scariest moment of the night was me walking to the van, Christmas presents in hand, and some guy walking out of the shadows with a big grin on his face. He wanted me to know "we" (I was wearing my Longhorns shirt) had won the game. Last minute field goal. I guess there are some things about this rivalry I will miss, like complete strangers wanting to share a victory in a dark and unlit area. If I had brought pepper spray, there would have been another case of customer "resource guarding" on Black Friday.

Battlefield: Best Buy

Best Buy was different. As soon as I got in line, I could tell the differences. For one, the crowd was younger. They also looked like they had been waiting in line a lot longer. There were lots of people in chairs and huddled together under ponchos, but it hadn't rained in 24 hours, which was weird. They also looked geekier and more fan-boy. It made me wonder if George Lucas was going to be at the store. Or Olivia Wilde.

Like the TRU line people, the BB line people had their worries, too. Most of it was Red Bull exageration I think, because the guy on the phone in front of me was calling a friend and described the line as being one thousand to fifteen hundred people long where we stood. He was probably right if you took away a thousand. Amateurs...

There was another key difference between the Toys R Us crowd and the Best Buy crowd. At Best Buy, there were a lot of chain smokers. At Toys R Us, there was very little cigarette smoke, but somebody was definitely smoking weed. Now that I think of it, maybe that was why everyone was so cordial and nice at Toys R Us! Maybe that was why I was thinking of aliens, too...

At Best Buy, there were a couple of issues. The way Best Buy had their lines set up, I had to enter another line and swim downstream through all the people waiting to purchase something that you needed an orange sheet to purchase. I left my cart in the aisle. By the time I got back, one of my purchases had been pilfered. (Because I don't want to reveal the present to anyone, I will refer to it as "Electric Cow Ears." I couldn't find it back on the rack, so I went to get back in line. But by then the general line pretty much wrapped all around the store. There was nobody from Best Buy manning the lines, and so I went to so many lines, it felt like FEMA after a hurricane. Then a Best Buy person showed up to fix the line problem. Fortunately, that meant that everybody AFTER me had to go to the back of another line (suckers!) and I could merge with the current one. I probably saved hours by not having to go to the back of that line. Of course, there is a rumor that those people are actually still in line, stuck in a kind of purgatory between heaven and hell, err...cashiers and the end of the line.

On the plus side, right before the cashiers was a row of Electric Cow Ears, so I was able to get the gift at the discounted rate after all. On the downside, I probably spent three hours at Best Buy and only saved $30. And there was no George Lucas or Olivia Wilde appearance. I think that disappointed me the most.

World of Black Friday-Craft

So it wasn't all that bad. I haven't done a dollar-by-dollar tally of the savings, but I probably saved a couple of hundred dollars by sunrise. I could have saved more if I had been buying big-ticket items like TVs and iPads instead of Electric Cow Ears.

If you look beyond the illegal drugs, the scary Longhorn fan, and the long lines of Shoggoth (I couldn't resist inserting a little Lovecraft), it was a very unpredictable and boring Friday night. Which is the part that affects people the most. "In a world of instant results" and all that. People hate standing in line for longer than thirty seconds, even if it means you can save money. I have a higher tolerance for it, I guess. Maybe it was all that ultramarathon training I did in my twenties. I got used to the idea of doing the same something for nine to ten hours, and let's be honest, my speed as an ultramarathoner was probably a little faster than standing in line at Best Buy.

Will I do it again? Probably. Will next year be as crazy as this year? Probably not. But there's nothing wrong with standing in line unless aliens are using the local Toys R Us to slaughter townspeople.

Sir Gawain and the History of Farting

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 05:00:00 +0000

My computer takes forever to boot. I think it has something to do with a. being a PC and b. me not knowing how to set it up better. The result of the situation is that I have some time to kill while waiting for various beeps and grunts to finish their electric gurgle from my hard drive. So I was walking around the room and my books caught my eye.

Man, have I got a weird collection. Not eclectic or refined. Just odd. My top shelf has my college books and some other things. They make me sound smart. If I was still single, I would probably show this shelf off to try to impress girls. The second shelf (from the top) is devoted to childhood awards and toys. (Does anyone remember what a Battle Beast is?) The third shelf is apparently where I keep a lot of books that I personally like. The bottom two shelves are mostly tapes, CDs, assorted manuals, and collections (Tolkien, Sherlock Holmes).

But back to that top shelf. A closer look reveals (right to left):

Tomas Rivera's ...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (In English and Spanish!)

Candide (True story - in high school we had to make food based on Candide. I don't remember what I made, but somebody baked a cake butt. No bull. It was a cake made to look like a gluttous maximous. I think they did a very good job.)

Cliff's Notes for The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost (I swear I only used them as a resource. I did actually read those books. They are among my favorites.)

Canto Al Pueblo (No clue. It was college.)

The DaVinci Code (Interestingly, this book is right next to...)

ICS 300 and 400 Training Manuals (I guess in case incident command needs to be set up in my study)

Blood Meridian (Totally badass book)

Dorling Kinderslety Handbooks: Dogs ("The most acessible recognition guides")

Barron's Australian Cattle Dogs

The History of Farting (There goes my chance of ever looking refined) (And thanks, hon. I love this book. Hilarious!)

A Beautiful Mind

The Canterbury Tales

Jurassic Park

William Wadsworth (Guarded by General Grievous)

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (another favorite)

Asimov's Robot Dreams

Spenser's The Faerie Queene (I. did not. read. the Cliff's Notes!)

Chretien De Troyes' Arthurian Romances

Lawman's Brut

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner RULZ!)

The Best of HP Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre (with highlights for "In the Vault," "The Silver Key," "The Colour Out of Space," and "The Thing on the Doorstep")

Hank the Cowdog (still the best detective books ever)

and

Dinosaurs of North America by Helen Roney Sattler, illustrated by Anthony Rao (One of my first great dinosaur books, and one that filled the greatest requirement of pre-teen boys: jaw-droppingly insane illustrations)

So that's me. Somewhere between A History of Farting, some embarrassing Cliff's Notes on Paradise Lost, and Dinosaurs of North America, you get this weird writer/cadaver dog handler. I like it.

New Novel Setup

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:55:00 +0000

Okay, so I kind of ran out of gas on the last book I wrote somewhere in the rewrite phase. I got to the point where I got reviews in from some family members, made changes to the book based on their very good inputs...and then I started wondering if the whole setup is wrong. For whatever reason, I also was not digging the voice. So I started a complete rewrite to the novel and lost traction. I decided I needed/wanted to work on something else. Which brings me to novel number 3.

This novel is my take on a post-apocalypse. But instead of being about full-fledged adults dealing with the loss of their society, I decided I wanted to write about teens whose world falls out from under them. So far, I think it has been a good direction to take. Some of these teens are becoming more adult while others are still firmly in terra teen-firma.

The first thing to decide before writing any post-apocalypse story is whether or not you reveal what caused the post-apocalypse. I am thinking of The Road, which only alludes to a nuclear war but does not give any details. This is the "War of the Worlds" direction (WotW was written with very little full-disclosure moments -- most of the book centered around the war's affect on the primary characters and did not describe, for instance, what was happening in France or what the Prime Minister was doing to stop the Martians).

Then there is the why and how. I don't want to get into it too much, but I am an animal lover and a monster lover. Post-apocalypse or not, these kids need to be fighting some monsters! So in this one the creatures are monstercized animals. Dogs, cats, cattle. I'm sure there is a monstercized goldfish in there somewhere, too. My question to you, though, is what animal do you find monstrous or that you think would make a good monster? Feel free to respond in the comments or email me.

New Photos Up

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:10:00 +0000

I was checking out SARQuest.org, which is a fantastic site, and I happened on some pictures of Mojo working on scents. I have copied them over here, too. Go to www.douggoodman.net, and click on Photos (SAR). Take a look at them and tell me what you think. Some are funny, and some are great shots of dog behavior. (See photo comments for what I mean about behavior.) Besides photos of dogs, you get lots of pictures of me in camo pants. Now, in my defense, I bought the camo pants when there was a chance the team would be going to Joplin to help with recovery efforts there, so I wasn't thinking fashion sense. I just needed an extra pair of britches to get dirty. Cleary, I wasn't thinking ANYTHING about fashion sense. I have seen other people pull off the whole camo fashion thing. Not me. The lesson learned: Goodman sticks to khakis.

There are also photos of Rider and Princess. Sometime soon, I should post some pictures of Mojo when he isn't working (just to prove that he does have down time!)

I Swear I Didn't Mean For You To Look For A Dead Guy

Mon, 03 Oct 2011 01:10:00 +0000

There are five basic commands all dogs should know: sit, down, stay, come, and heel. The better your dog knows these five commands, the more easily the pup can handle the more advanced commands. Sometimes, though, cadaver dogging and obedience get in the way of each other.

When I first got Mojo, my family lived in an apartment, so taking Moj for walks outside was mandatory. As a result of all that walking, Mojo is pretty good at the heel command. He was so good, it got in the way of his HRD training. See, when Moj first started training, he didn't want to lead me to a scent; he wanted to heel at my side. It took a little work, but after some consistency and a few weeks, he began to work away from me. (However, from time to time when he gets tired or frustrated, he will still revert to the heel position and want me to lead him around.)

Because of this issue with heel, I didn't train my next too pups, Princess and Ryder, to heel. I taught them "Walk With Me," which means stay in my general area. Lately, though, I've gotten the idea in my head to train Ryder and work with Mojo on the heel command. Despite not heeling for the past 3-5 years, Mojo did a pretty good job staying at my side. I did one thing wrong, though. One key thing. I used my hand to motion for him to stay with me. As soon as Mojo saw that hand move in front of him, his nose dove down into the ground like it did at HRD training on Saturday. Whoops! Don't need Mojo confusing "heel" with "find dead guy!" I'm going to have to find another way to get his attention. (Probably slapping my knee to begin with.)

Ryder did much better, though she hated when I worked her on the Sit command. I could get about 340 degrees behind her when she would spin to face me. I growled a correction, took her by the scruff of the neck, and repositioned her. Again, though, I couldn't get past 340 degrees. This time when I corrected her, she went back down and paws up. Okay, pup. We'll have to build towards 360. She did really well with fetch, though. Moj, who thinks the only way to keep a game of fetch going is to bark loudly and incessantly until the ball is thrown, didn't fare so well. He also wanted to play his other favorite game, called "I growl at you until you rip the ball out of my jaws, then I will start barking incessantly at you again." This is why he couldn't do frisbee competitions. Okay, not the big reason, but part of it.

I am going to have to work with the dogs tomorrow on obedience, but this time I need to be mindful not to direct Mojo to cadaver dog when I want him to heel...

Dusting Around the Website

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:10:00 +0000

Hello. It has been a while. The last post was in July, but hopefully the posts should turn up more regularly now. I am going to do some obedience work with Ryder, and Mojo and I will be attending a cadaver dog seminar in early November. I am working on a second novel, and I am also building a few short stories as well.

As part of all this, I am dusting off the website. I cleared out some HTML cobwebs and brushed off the old code. I changed out the monthly story for the first time in too long. (Go check it out if you get a chance. I have Queen Anne's Corpse up. Since Arkham Tales is now listed as a "dead market," I thought it was time to post the Corpse to my website. Besides, it will be up in October, and how can you not post a story about corpses in October?)

I have heard several times writers referring to published novels as not so much being finished projects but being in a state of doneness at the time. I completely get that. When posting Queen Anne's Corpse, I had to resist the urge to rewrite. I changed one word, but that's it, I swear!

A couple of weeks ago, I also re-read about five of my old short stories that never published and sent them off as submissions. They still sounded good, so I thought "Why not?" Already, oneof them has been rejected, which oddly enough has a "back to the grind" feel to it. Good to be back. Now let's see if any of those rejections can change into acceptances.