9/11

Today is September 11th. It is a horrible thing that I can't think of the attack on the twin towers without my memory becoming polluted by all that has happened since. It seems to me that the casualties of that day were the tip of the iceberg for the damage those terrorists managed to inflict on our country with their box cutters and our naivete. I wish I could remember just those victims and feel the appropriate amount of sadness for their tragedy and the tragedies of their surviving families, and I think as an American, I ought to be allowed that kind of mourning, and yet, it has become impossible for me not to also think of George W. Bush, perpetual war, the energy crisis, this recession, torture, secret prisons, secret phone taps, and now our violently polarized politics. We should remember those days after September 11th today when we all swore that we wouldn't let the terrorist win. Maybe, eight year later, we ought to all renew that vow.

Mixed feelings

I recycle more than you. You don't know this, but it is, in fact, true. I make scenery for wargames out of garbage which means that there are a lot of things I don't throw out. Pretty much anything box-like, made of plastic, or in general, worthless.

Michel Foucalt once postulated (this is "Docile Bodies" I believe: here he is talking about balls) that if you force someone to physically be something (a soldier, a patient, an alcoholic) then they will follow suit mentally and take on the angle of that identity. Normally, I hate Foucalt (I call him Fuck Alt) but he seems to have a point. As I've begun filling my attic with garbage, well, I feel more environmentally alert.

So, it is with mixed feelings that I face the fact that my school cafeteria has done away with cafeteria trays and different sizes of soft drink (they now give free refills). Their logic for the drink is simple. Smaller cups, free refills, less garbage, and yes, I get it, but I don't eat in the cafeteria and so I would like a very large cup. Does that make me a horrible human being? I don't care.

But it's the trays that I find absolutely fascinating--their absense defies all reason. If I get a sandwich, some chips, and a piece of fruit, I run out of hands. This is a serious design flaw on their part. What's worse is that if you order food to go, as I do. They generally hand it to you in a container that is not designed to be carried by hand. I got a hot roast beef sandwich today straight out of a furnace, quickly envoloped in some nice insulating tin foil, and then thrown to me like a hot potato which I bobbled in line at the register for a good five minutes as the various people in front of me fumbled for change as they patted their food up into the air with agonized dexterity.

Maybe I'm missing the point. Perhaps, the school's juggling team isn't doing so hot and this is their way of making the student body practice without their even knowing it. All I know is that there must be some kind of tradeoff with all this. No trays means closer contact with the cafeteria tables, which I've never seen anyone clean, and which the staff will probably be less inclined to clean now since we're conserving water. This will ,of course, lead to fewer people in the long run I imagine, which is ultimately the best thing, all around, for the environment. On the other hand, quite literally, the water that's wasted from me putting my hand in ice after my game of hot potato has to factor in there somewhere as well.

Continue the Boycott!

I would like to invite all the parents who kept their children out of school yesterday to continue their boycott. Listen, Obama WANTS your children to stay in a federally funded school--THAT'S SOCIALISM!!!

His vaguely hidden message that each of America's children has potential to make the country a better place should not be tolerated despite what you're now hearing from the wishy washy Republican Leadership who seem to have gone all soft in the last moment. Christ, Laura Bush, don't you get the Rush Limbaugh newsletter. Take your pain pills and get with the program.

SOCIALISM!! NAZI!!

Keep your children out of school. The truth is that capitalism needs an undereducated exploitable working class. The AARP gives their endorsment. Jim Greer supports your stupid kids (well, he supports their being stupid, he won't support them financially). Principals, please, close your doors, as you did yesterday, to the value of education. Make sure your students hear the message loud and clear: you don't think they have potential!

Remember, when the guilt hits you that you have failed your students in some fundamental way, that they trusted you, and you betrayed that trust by selling them out to a totalizing ideology, that you let the Republican party decide your role as an educator, you did that because you don't want politics telling you what to do. You're an individual, and those godless socialists like Obama can't take that away from you by telling your students that their individual potentials must be fulfilled for the good of the nation.

In any case, what with the recession, your students will probably have to go to work in a factory soon anyways, so, big deal that they didn't get to hear the President tell them that they can make something of their lives.

Among The Savages- First Day

I am continuously enticed to start up a new blog. Occasionally, I do. Occasionally, I don't. The truth is that, right now, I am so locked down for time, that any other activity besides those that can be performed while watching children is moot, and even there, that's what I do in my free time when I'm not teaching or writing professionally, or...writing a dissertation. However, had I the time, I would want to chronicle this in blog form: today I begin a class teaching Freshman composition and all but one student is an engineering major. That's a lot of engineering majors.

One of the interesting things about college composition is that you often meet people in various stages of developing their writing skills. Some are quite able to do what you ask, others not. Students in the field of engineering are more often the latter rather than the former. It isn't that they aren't good students, this just isn't there gig. In general, they slip into the background, and your go-to students remain in the humanities and you hope that some of it is sinking into the silent kids in the back, but in this class, that will be all the kids.

The good news is that I imagine I will not find myself filling as many classroom roles. I will probably not have to convince the class's prima donna that their blog and its ten readers are not evidence that they don't need a class in writing while simultaneously trying to teach someone else how to use a comma, while trying to argue with someone else that all immigrants are worthless and horrible. Chances are, with a class of all engineers, the problems I face, simultaneously, as the teacher will resemble each other.

We'll see, I suppose.

Midas- End Game

I should point out that after Midas screwed my car up and I got in a fight with the owner and their mechanic, I eventually called corporate who refunded me the price of my last visit to Midas under the full knowledge that I was accruing the name of regulatory agencies to call.

Just remember kids, never stop halfway up the ladder. Always call the boss's boss's boss. They don't appreciate getting called and they seem to know who to blame.

Van Jones

As you may already know, Van Jones (special adviser for environmental jobs to the President) resigned today after noted drug addict Rush Limbaugh asked him, "are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist party." Or wait, is Limbaugh Cohen or McCarthy?

Notice, that yet again, the Republicans are picking on the black guy. I'm just saying.