If I only had a brain

I do not want to complain too much about the students that I have this semester, not that I'm against complaining about the students. I don't teach high school after all; I teach college, and some people simply aren't college material. If you brow beat a child, you're a dick, but I teach adults and if they act like idiots, I'm not against saying so, or even sharing with you.

The problem is that one of my classes is composed of frickin' geniuses. I find myself giving them advice, not as their teacher, but as a fellow writer. I cannot heap enough praise on them, and they deserve almost all of it. My only complaint is that they don't talk much in class, but I have been told that I can be, at times, intimidating. Believe me, its better than being a pushover. If any of you have been in a college classroom where the teacher was a pushover, I'm sure you'll agree: an easy going teacher all but summons some crazy fucker to come out of the woodwork and scream derogatory comments at any idea he or she does not immediately condone.

My other class, however, is a little worse. I'm under emoting that. They're pretty horrible. At first, I just thought that they were ridiculously above all this--a condition you sometimes get with freshman their first semester just before they drop out. I have come, however, to realize that they are in fact kind of brainless. I will illustrate using two points.

The first point is this: I asked the class, as a writing exercise, to think of a story that illustrated the point of their paper. I then asked them to do a number of things with that story (determine who the hero was, who the villain, what did the hero and villain have in common, what were the important details of the story, etc.). Someone raised their hand and said, "what if there are no stories that illustrate your point?"...

Is that zen or something. I don't even know how to respond to that question. What could it mean? What sort of argument or idea cannot be illustrated in a story. When I balked at the question, this student asked how one went about coming up with a story. It was a serious question.

Now, you might think that I'm being played, but I'm not. These are people who log time with a tutor, and I am sent that tutor's log, and it is held up in front of me as a defense against their grade. "What do you mean I got a B-, I spent six hours with a tutor!" Their writing is horrendous. I received better essays from high schoolers back in California. Most of these students are on scholarship, all of them are taking their second semester of college writing, and two are juniors. Meanwhile, I've received entire essays about the hypocrisy of the Christine religion, and other essays which discuss the political repercussions when one chooses to fallow the ten commandments.

"What if there isn't a story that illustrates the point?" My brain still hurts.

My favorite move from this class, however, is not their lack of intelligence. That I suppose I can forgive, though not the system that brought them to my classroom, nor the system that will probably fire me if I flunk them all. What gets me is that stupid people are so often proud of their stupidity. Just today I received an email from someone who was supposed to get me their paper on Thursday. The re read, "Finally!!"

Evidently, this student was hoping to cause a preemptive strike. She knows that I know that she's late. Hell, that has to count for something, right? I mean she's as fed up with her performance as I am. I wonder if she'll feel that same empathy with me if I give her an F, or will that be the moment that all this understanding was meant to avoid. Will she say to me, "I thought we were together man, I mean, we both agreed that my performance is ridiculously sub par. I thought we were on the same page. How could you give me an F."

Ah incompetence!

Even more in the news

Man, today was a big news day

Jessica Simpson--not normally someone whom I would applaud, but holy shit that's funny. I mean, she hung out with Ashley Simpson, even after that whole Saturday Night Live fiasco. How bad of a fucking image do you have to have before you get snubbed by Jessica Simpson!

Also, maybe you all may remember at some point my saying that the Atkins diet didn't sound healthy? Well, I am vindicated. Bring on the taters! For those of you with attention spans too short to read the whole thing, one word: COMA.

In the News...

In other news:

First and foremost: the Star Trek theme has words!!!

Second, H and R block are running a con job!!!

Okay, my dad reads my blog and my dad could probably make more sense of this then I could. He after all, plays the stock market and all that. Even now I can imagine him, a ticker tape somewhere in sight; on the phone with a broker. In other words, my dad does the kind of shit that pretty much is required to make money in the market. Near as I can figure, this involves two integral activities:

1-paying attention to your stocks prices on an hourly (if not minute-by-minute) basis.

2-Selling or buying your stocks the moment that they reach the price you hope for.

If you are unable to do those things you might as well send your money to me. I'll open a savings account for you and extend you a line of credit. What do you say?

No?

Well, why then does it seem logical to anyone to put a lot of money into a group of stocks, that everyone assumes will do well (but no guarantees) to be sold off at your retirement. Fluidity is the necessary component of this system! Buying a stock and holding onto it for...oh I don't know...forty years seems like a good way to lose money.

So, how does anyone justify these kinds of stock purchases? Here's how. They don't sell people A stock; they sell them ten different stocks. One of them is bound to do well, right? Well, you'd be better off with someone who is willing to sink your money into the one stock that's doing well, dump it when it stops doing well, and reinvest. As Twain said, put all your eggs in one basket, and then WATCH THAT BASKET (from Puddin' Head Wilson). Now, I know what you're thinking, who has time to do such a thing? Well, if you're not retired, you might want to hire an investor to help manage your money, like say...H and R block. Why then did H and R block drop the ball on this?

Because big business is some lazy fuckers. They have one job to do, and they can't do it. They are only willing to buy ten stocks for you and then sit on them for forty years, and they are unwilling to micro manage the accounts for which they are responsible even though doing so would, in a sense, be like micro managing one gigantic account.

I'm not saying that these group stock purchases are a scam--they aren't. They pay, or fail to pay, like everything else in the market, but the way they are presented is a total con job. They are presented as if it were a foregone conclusion that they will pay out at a rate higher than the rate of inflation...not just for this year, but for every year up to the point when you retire. It doesn't work that way, the people peddling these things know that it doesn't work that way, and worse yet, they tell you that it works that way so that they need only pay attention to your money on a quarterly basis, rather than giving it their daily attention--which is what would be required to make these things pay off.

N or Q

Well, turns out we were wrong on who the nation's greatest threat might be. But the good news is we were only off by one letter. Plus, we get all those funny videos of Saddam making an ass of himself. Oh....can I say Saddam and ass in the same sentence, or will there be rioting in Beirut. What am I saying, there's always rioting in Beirut.

Yes, immenently pressed by Republicans and Democrats alike to pull out of an unwinnable war, the President has made a decision. Now, he's not going to admit that the war isn't winnable. No... Nor is he going to say that we didn't see that whole civil war thing coming...them's just the birth pangs of a new democracy. We're going to pull out of Iraq because there's a bigger threat, and as luck would have it, it's right next door in lovely Iran.

Like India, Iran has a burgeoning nuclear program. Unlike India, though, the answer to the question: "Where the hell'd my job go?" is never: "Iran." Look, I agree. If there is one country in the world that I don't want to have a nuclear weapon, it's Iran. But haven't I heard this shit before. What, did they buy yellow cake in Somalia. Is Britain backing up our intelligence reports. Is Rice ignoring another high security document in order to manufacture a war with Iran?