Quotation Saturday: Snow

Posted on by February 21, 2010
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quotationsaturdayMamacita says:  Since southern Indiana has been covered with snow for two weeks now, I thought I’d use that same idea for Quotation Saturday.  The forecast for tomorrow night, indeed, is for more snow, but unless the “feel” of the air changes between now and then, I would put my money – if I had any – on torrential rain.   The thing is, I love snow, as long as I don’t have to go somewhere in it.  I also worry about my students, who are driving in from every direction, the good ones concerned about missing class.  When they call or email me about unplowed roads and sheets of ice, I tell them to stay home, with full attendance points.  Those who stay home without contacting me are no doubt doing the right thing, but without the attendance points.

1. Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery. — Bill Watterson

2. Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough. — Earl Wilson

3. Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow. — Jeff Valdez

4. Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, “I’m going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that’s tough. I am going to snow anyway. — Maya Angelou

5. The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found? -–J.B. Priestley

6. In any man who dies there dies with him, his first snow and kiss and fight. Not people die but worlds die in them. — Yevgeny Yevtushenko

7. Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into, the mind. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

8. The future lies before you, like paths of pure white snow. Be careful how you tread it, for every step will show. — Unknown

9. The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love. — Margaret Atwood

10. The snow doesn’t give a soft white damn whom it touches. — e.e. cummings  images

11. A snowflake is one of God’s most fragile creations, but look what they can do when they stick together! –Author Unknown

12. Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

13. Few things are as democratic as a snowstorm. — Bern Williams

14. The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball. — Doug Larson

15. Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty. –Voltaire

16. They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it? — Jeanette Winterson

17. You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake… This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.
-– Chuck Palahniuk

18. It’s a pity one can’t imagine what one can’t compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow. — Vladimir Nabokov

19. I seemed to vow to myself that some day I would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till I came to one of the poles of the earth, the end of the axis upon which this great round ball turns. — Ernest Shackleton

20. When I no longer thrill to the first snow of the season, I’ll know I’m growing old. — Lady Bird Johnson

21. Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

22. The snow falls, each flake in its appropriate place. — Zen saying

23. Silently, like thoughts that come and go, the snowflakes fall, each one a gem. — William Hamilton Gibson

24. A little snow, tumbled about, anon becomes a mountain. — William Shakespeare

25. I think we are bound to, and by, nature. We may want to deny this connection and try to believe we control the external world, but every time there’s a snowstorm or drought, we know our fate is tied to the world around us. — Alice Hoffman

26. “It’s snowing still,” said Eeyore gloomily. “So it is.” “And freezing.” “Is it?” “Yes,” said Eeyore. “However,” he said, brightening up a little, “we haven’t had an earthquake lately.” –A.A. Milne

27. When you live in Texas, every single time you see snow it’s magical. — Pamela Ribon

28. Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories. –From the movie An Affair to Remember

29. Everything is equal in the snow: all trees, all lawns, all streets, all rooftops, all cars. Everything is white, white, white, as far as you can see. Covered by snow, the well-kept and neglected lawns look the same. The snow hides the shiny newness of a just-bought car as effectively as it does the rust and dents of a ten-year-old one. Everything looks clean and fresh and unmarred by time or use. Snow, like the silent death it counterfeits, is a great leveler. — Adrienne Ivey

30. Let every man shovel out his own snow and the whole city will be passable. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

31. This dirty puddle used to be pure snow. I walk by it with respect. – Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

32. Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face. – Victor Hugo

33. Surely as cometh the Winter, I know
There are Spring violets under the snow. — R. H. Newell

34. Winter is nature’s way of saying, “Up yours.” — Robert Byrne

35. February, when the days of winter seem endless and no amount of wistful recollecting can bring back any air of summer. — Shirley Jackson

36. There seems to be so much more winter than we need this year. — Kathleen Norris

37. Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand-and melting like a snowflake… — Francis Bacon

38. Snowflakes, like people, are all different and beautiful, but they can be a nuisance when they lose their identity in a mob. — Unknown

39. Lives are snowflakes – forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There’s not a chance you’d mistake one for another, after a minute’s close in. . . . — Neil Gaiman

40. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand … and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late. — Marie Beynon Ray

41. Patty: “Try to catch snowflakes on your tongue. It’s fun.”
Linus Van Pelt: “Mmm. Needs sugar.”
Lucy Van Pelt: “It’s too early. I never eat December snowflakes. I always wait until January.”
Linus Van Pelt: “They sure look ripe to me.” –from A Charlie Brown Christmas

42. Frosty’s not gone for good. You see, he was made out of Christmas snow and Christmas snow can never disappear completely. It sometimes goes away for almost a year at a time and takes the form of spring and summer rain. But you can bet your boots that when a good, jolly December wind kisses it, it will turn into Christmas snow all over again. — from Frosty the Snowman

43. What’s this? There’s white things in the air! What’s this? I can’t believe my eyes, I must be dreaming. . . from Nightmare Before Christmas

44. We are not powerless specks of dust drifting around in the wind, blown by random destiny. We are, each of us, like beautiful snowflakes unique, and born for a specific reason and purpose. — Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

45. I love you because no two snowflakes are alike, and it is possible, if you stand tippy-toe, to walk between the raindrops. — Nikki Giovanni

46. Snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist. — — Paula Gunn

47. A snowdrift is a beautiful thing – if it doesn’t lie across the path you have to shovel or block the road that leads to your destination — Hal Borland

48. Nothing sets a person up more than having something turn out just the way it’s supposed to be, like falling into a Swiss snowdrift and seeing a big dog come up with a little cask of brandy round its neck. — Claud Cockburn

49. We build statues out of snow, and weep to see them melt. — Sir Walter Scott

50. He had read somewhere that the Eskimos had over two hundred words for snow, without which their conversation would probably have got very monotonous. So they would distinguish between thin snow and thick snow, light snow and heavy snow, sludgy snow, brittle snow, snow that came in flurries, snow that came in drifts, snow that came in on the bottom of your neighbour’s boots all over your nice clean igloo floor, the snows of winter, the snows of spring, the snows you remember from your childhood that were so much better than any of your modern snow, fine snow, feathery snow, hill snow, valley snow, snow that falls in the morning, snow that falls at night, snow that falls all of a sudden just when you were going out fishing, and snow that despite all your efforts to train them, the huskies have pissed on. — Douglas Adams

51. Over the roar of the wind she heard a crackle and snap behind her. She hugged the ground tighter and turned her head. It was one of the posts around the haystack that the wind had snapped off where it went into the ground. The wires were still attached to it, but the wind whipped it high in the murky air, held it there playfully though it quivered like a live thing, and then slapped it back toward the ground. Yes, and the wind would have been just as impervious if it had been a live thing it tossed up and down in the air. . . . that was the bone-chilling thing – the uncaringness of the elements. To the brutal wind Stacy Belford was nothing more than the fence post it had snapped in two. She was at the mercy of a faceless enemy, incapable of mercy. ” . . .”The wind didn’t know or care about me, not any more than a haystack – or the fence post. . .” “I know, I know. I remember when I first felt that way about a blizzard – that it would just as soon freeze me stiff as a board as it would a sack of potatoes.” . . . “And the stars kept right on shining up in the sky. . . I always thought stars were friendly. . . .” — Lenora Mattingly Weber

And so I wait for the last of this snow to melt, and I listen to the rain, beating the snow into shoe-sucking-deep mud, and I think, wow, it’s going to be idling-room only at the car wash. Not that I darken the car wash doors very often, because I own a hose and a sponge, and I have no money.

Come on, snow. SNOW. It’s winter, and it’s your time to shine. You don’t want to miss your cue and end up on stage in April, do you? Well, no offense, but I really don’t want to see you then. I want to see you NOW. Up the air just a few degrees, and come on down.

Leave That Sleeping Teen Alone!!!!!

Posted on by February 19, 2010
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I posted part of this a couple of years ago, but it’s the weekend and I think it bears posting again because when I think of all those exhausted teens being dragged from their beds because some adult thinks that because he’s up, everyone should be up, I get really angry on behalf of the teens.

Mamacita says:   I remember being so tired it wasn’t humanly possible to turn OVER, let alone get up.  But I got up anyway, because I had responsibilities.  I sleep-walked across campus many times, to take a test.  I took tests with migraines so severe there were sparks shooting out of my head and I could barely read the questions.  I took tests that I’d pulled two or three all-nighters in a row to prepare for, and I really believed I was prepared!  I have fallen asleep with my head resting on my completed test.   I never once cut class on a test day, even though there were plenty of times when I wanted to.  (Are you listening, students dear?) (Because midterms aren’t all that far away, you know.)

I think a great way of telling whether a person is an adult or still a kid is watching him/her to see if he/she is, on a regular basis, dragging the ol’ carcass out of bed to do something because he/she signed up to do it, promised people he/she would be there to do it, paid money to do it or is being paid money to do it, and by golly he/she is just SUPPOSED to be there to do it.  No excuses. If it’s an obligation that requires a timeline with an established start and finish point, get up.

That being said:

Unless there is a legitimate reason for a teen to get up on a Saturday or any vacation day, the kid should be allowed to stay in bed all DAY if that’s what he/she wants.  Item:  the possible fact that Mom and/or Dad are up is NOT a legitimate reason to make others get up.

Teenagers really do need far more sleep than even a baby, and they seldom get it.  Many adults don’t understand this, and they insist that a teen GET UP on a Saturday morning or a vacation, because YOU’RE WASTING HALF THE DAY! COME ON, GET UP, THERE ARE CHORES TO BE DONE, ETC ETC ETC and these things can’t be done at nighttime, apparently. . . .  Plus, there’s the absolutely ridiculous early-morning start of high school, which most experts agree is detrimental to most teens’ body clock and yet school systems insist on it, mostly for the convenience of the bus drivers and families who rely on their older kids to babysit the younger kids after school.

Doesn’t anybody care about our sleepy teens?  An average teenager’s body requires ten to fourteen hours of sleep sometimes!  Why won’t some parents let the kid sleep?  Just, you know, leave the kid alone and let him SLEEP?  Wasting the day?  Some people are night owls, plain and simple, and sleeping when they’re the most tired is just logical.  Not everybody loves the early morning.  I don’t.  I hate it, in fact.  “Are you ever going to get out of that bed?  Do you intend to sleep your life away?  Jane, you’re wasting half of your Saturday!”  No, I wasn’t.  My Saturday was divided differently than certain other people, that’s all.  And at nine or ten p.m., when those people were curled up in bed, I was just beginning to be at my mental-alertness peak. I’m still that way.

Teens are wasting good daylight hours when they could be DOING something?  No, they’re not.  Teenagers desperately need that sleep, so leave them alone on their days off and let them sleep. It doesn’t do any good to insist that a kid go to bed earlier, either.  Most of the time, a kid just isn’t sleepy enough to go to bed earlier.  Mother Nature is a wily old thing and wired us all differently, sleep-needs-wise.

So who’s right and who’s wrong?  Nobody and everybody, of course.  But far too many adults can’t fathom a kid who wants to sleep so much.  Nay, a kid who MUST sleep so much.  I understand it completely.  I sympathize. I’m all for leaving the kid alone and letting him sleep.  He needs that sleep.  He needs hours and hours and hours of blissful uninterrupted sleep, far more than adults need.  Leave the kid alone and let him sleep!

Unless, of course, the kid, of his own free will, signed up for a job, or a degree, in which case, the kid needs to be there, #2 pencil in hand, or spiffy uniform donned and ready to fry, right smack when he/she contracted to be there, or else.  Part of becoming an adult is forcing oneself to do things one really doesn’t want to do, simply because it’s the right thing to do.  Many forty-year-olds still haven’t learned this.

HOWEVER, if that’s the case, these kids should have signed up for the midafternoon or evening class, not the morning class.  And since they did sign up for it, they need to honor their commitment. Most of my students have jobs.  That’s good.  All teens should pay for their own car insurance, dates, and fast food with the pals.  But if a kid can get up for fast food with the pals, the kid can get up for class.

Parents, please leave your teens alone on vacation mornings.  Do you really think he/she would have set the iPod and cell phone down and turned his/her back on them unless there was a very, very, very good reason?  Your kids are genuinely tired.  They desperately NEED that sleep.  It’s not laziness.  It’s biology.

Just be grateful it’s the kind of in-bed biology that you don’t have to lose your own sleep over.

So, old people, get up at the asscrack break of dawn if you are wired that way (bizarre) but leave other people alone. It’s a funny thing, but early-rising people always seem to love that time of day so much, they can’t conceive of anyone not being grateful to be awakened to share it.

News flash, morning people: If you don’t get out of here right now and leave me alone, I’m going to have to hurt you. I’m not kidding. The only good sunrise is the one you watch before you hit the sheets.

And I was even worse as a teen.

Sincerely,
–Dracula’s daughter

P.S. If the teen has a real commitment, such as a job or a class, he/she needs a good LOUD alarm clock and some serious consequences falling on his/her head – not from you but from the college or employer – if there’s a question about whether or not to get up to meet that obligation. If you just want the car washed, you can bloody well wait until late afternoon. Sheesh. Go watch the sun rise and eat “breakfast” if it’s that important to you. Leave everybody else alone. LEAVE THEM ALONE. You are not like them, and they are not like you. They’re normal, and you’re a bloody freak.

Well, I feel better now.

Why Are We Allowing Schools to Punish the VICTIMS of Bullying, and Not the Bullies?

Posted on by February 15, 2010
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bullyMamacita says:  There is nothing on the planet as important as our kids, and we really need to keep aware of what’s going on in their world. Even when we don’t like to admit that these things are happening.

Oftimes, those things that are the hardest to believe, are the very things that are really happening.

Look out:  I’m going to rant about bullies here.  Theme:  Bullies suck.

As parents, we sometimes hide behind the “not MY kid” philosophy. I’m sorry, but that one doesn’t work all of the time. It IS your kid, and it’s MY kid, and it’s HER kid, and it’s HIS kid. It’s all of our kids. And even if your kid isn’t actually (insert popular but inappropriate activity here), your kid is being exposed to other kids who ARE.

There has always been peer pressure. It’s worse now than it’s ever been. There have always been bullying, and name-calling, etc. In the old days, such vile little creeps were kicked out of school and sometimes even hauled down to the station and sent to “reform school.” Now, bullies and harassers have “problems,” and need “guidance and understanding,” and should be “coddled” so their “anger issues” can be kept under control. Well, I suppose that’s easier than telling the little shithead to control himself OR ELSE. And then making sure the “or else” is some kind of memorable deprivation.

I wonder why it is, that the parents of the worst and most dangerous kids, are almost always the ones who stand the tallest to fight for their ‘rights?’ Don’t sweet well-behaved kids have any rights? Why are most of the rewards given to kids who terrorize and sneer? Two days of bringing a pencil to class should NOT be grounds for a limo ride. Where is the limo ride for the decent kids who brought pencils to class every single day because that’s what decent kids are SUPPOSED to do? Positive reinforcement is one thing, and barking idiocy is quite another. Oh, it’s for ‘self-esteem?’ Don’t even get me started. Besides, I’ve already ranted about THAT one.

I have a real problem with bullies. I think a school’s focus should be to refer them to some outside source for help, get them the hell OUT of the building so they can’t hurt anyone else, and to concentrate on the feelings of the victims. Why do the bad kids get all the attention? It’s not fair. A school should be a safe haven for all kids. Why has it turned into a safe haven mainly for rotten kids? When did school become the best place to bully and torment and tease? Why don’t we put a firm and heavy foot down on these nasty little terrorists? Oh, right. Their parents. Sorry. I forgot there for a minute. Oh, and they have rights. More rights than nice kids have. “Anger management problems.” Right.

Money talks, doesn’t it. Loudness is heard over fairness. Excuses make more sense than doing what’s right. It’s too hard to be well-behaved; don’t punish a kid for being a kid.

Guess what. Normal kids don’t terrorize, beat up, taunt, attack, and blackmail other kids. Even games penalize for unnecessary roughness; why doesn’t real life? Because schools are afraid of terrorist bullying parents, that’s why. Or even weeping, whiny parents who ‘don’t know how to handle him” but who will take you before the board if you don’t coddle him in every possible way. One irate parent’s opinion is usually enough to cave in an entire school board. Above all things, they fear loss of money and adverse publicity.

Oh sure, I know that LIFE isn’t fair. But shouldn’t it be? And wouldn’t it be, if we all worked harder to make it so?

Bottom line:  We need to stop enabling bullies, punishing their victims, and finding excuses for the bullying behaviors.  We then need to focus on the decent, well-behaved, creative, kind, artistic, musical, literate, in-OR-out-0f-the-box students, and give them what a school was meant to be: a place where those who wish to learn and advance, may do so without being slowed down or stopped completely by, well, anything or anyone.

Quotation Saturday: Gumption!

Posted on by February 13, 2010
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quotationsaturday

Mamacita says:  Well, well, well, another Saturday has sneaked up on us!

“Gumption” is an old-fashioned word, but gumption itself is a quality that seems to be old-fashioned, too.  Schoolkids aren’t given time to prove they’ve got gumption or not, because before they can even comprehend that they can’t comprehend something, an adult is right there showing them how, thus keeping the child from figuring things out himself.  When kids want to play, they no longer have to scout around the neighborhood, looking for an empty field, etc, and they no longer have to teach each other the rules, or look out for each other in case bullies, dogs, bees, poison ivy, or any other unmentionable shows up, because most kids these days have never even navigated their own neighborhood since they’ve never in all their lives EVER been out of their mother’s sight, and she’s always right there with the kids in their fenced-in back yard to save them from Nature or mean kids or the trouble of making their own amusement.  Any games a modern kid plays are set up, regulated, and supervised by adults.  Modern kids would have no idea how to play without a grownup right there to tell them how.  Sigh.

People have no gumption these days.  Plain and simple.  Those who have it are not encouraged to use it lest some other person’s self esteem be damaged, or he/she might fall down and break an arm, or – heaven forbid – he/she might even develop a love of learning and adventure and that would really rock the boat for school systems, administrations, and parents who’ve turned hovering into an art form.  Of course, if a child DOES fall down on the playground, the parents can always sue and get a lot of money.  I mean, falling down on a playground?  Why, it’s UNNATURAL.  Some adult wasn’t taking good enough care of the poor kid.  LAWSUIT.

Those who DO have gumption and who have the gumption to stand up and USE that gumption, deserve to rule the world.

1. Anyone who has gumption knows what it is, and anyone who hasn’t can never know what it is. So there is no need of defining it. — Lucy Maud Montgomery

2. It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own. — Jessamyn West

3. Boredom means you’re off the quality track, you’re not seeing things freshly, you’ve lost your “beginners mind”…boredom means your gumption supply is low and must be replenished before anything else is done. — Robert M. Pirsig

4. I like the word “gumption” because it’s so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn’t likely to reject anyone who comes along. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.

A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption.

If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good. — Robert Pirsig

5. When I was a kid, people who got divorced were people who had no gumption. — Phil Donahue

6. Thus my modest recommendation, requiring no change in laws or regulations, just a little more gumption. Let us start talking about group differences openly. — Charles Alan Murray

7. One of the final challenges for human beings is to get old with as much verve and gumption as
possible. — Alison Judson Ryerson

8. There are times when each of us has to have some gumption to take a stand as to what we wish to preserve or change in order to maintain our self-respect and not be as “a reed shaken with the wind” (Matt. 11:7) . . . . We lose much credibility and strength, and we risk being weighed on an uneven balance, when, Don Quixote-like, we go around “tilting windmills”. — James E. Faust

9. Margaret Mitchell ran into a fancy New York publisher when she was still writing Gone With The Wind.

“So, Little Lady, what’s your Civil War book about?” the publisher said.

Mitchell looked him in the eye: “It’s about people who have gumption and people who don’t.” –Unknown

10. When the worms are scarce, what does a hen do? Does she stop scratching? She does not. She scratches all the harder. A lot of businessmen have been showing less sense than a hen since orders became scarce. They have laid off salesmen; they have stopped or reduced their advertising; they have simply resigned themselves to inaction and, of course, to pessimism. If a hen knows enough to scratch all the harder when the worms are scarce, surely businessmen … ought to have gumption enough to scratch all the harder for business. — B.C. Forbes

11. To all the usual reasons why small companies have an advantage, from nimbleness to risk-taking, add these new ones: The rise of cloud computing means that young firms no longer have to buy their own IT equipment, which helps them avoid having to raise money or take on debt. Likewise, the webification of the supply chain in many industries, from electronics to apparel, means that even the tiniest companies can now order globally, just like the giants. In the same way a musician with just a laptop and some gumption can accomplish most of what a record label does, an ambitious engineer can invent and produce a gadget with little more than that same laptop. — Wired Magazine, The New New Economy

12. My personal feeling is that this is how any further improvement of the world will be done: by individuals making Quality decisions and that’s all. God, I don’t want to have any more enthusiasm for big programs full of social planning for big masses of people that leave individual Quality out. These can be left alone for a while. There’s a place for them but they’ve got to be built on a foundation of Quality within the individuals involved. We’ve had that individual Quality in the past, exploited it as a natural resource without knowing it, and now it’s just about depleted. Everyone’s just about out of gumption. And I think it’s about time to return to the rebuilding of this American resource — individual worth. — Robert Pirsig

I definitely need to re-read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

People who have no gumption:  I just don’t understand it.  Far too many people would rather sit at home and complain about having no job, than get up, walk out the door, and work at something “menial” while waiting for something better to come ’round.

Ten-year-old kids are being dressed from head to foot by Mommy.  They don’t even know how to put on their shoes, or button a shirt.  We used to make fun of Mary Lennox for standing like a statue, expecting Martha to dress her like a doll.  Because she DESERVED to be mocked.

Parents have no gumption about their children’s school.  Somehow, they’ve permitted our schools to become holding tanks for the lowest common denominator.  A school should be a place where those who wish to learn, might learn.  No person should be permitted to befoul our children’s schools with disruption, disrespect, or violence.  A school is intended for students: people with a desire to learn and advance.  Many administrators have no gumption and have taken the easy way out: cater to the population that lives to withhold education from those who want education.  I can think of no viable reason for a school to endure any person of any age who doesn’t want to learn and doesn’t intend to allow anybody else to do so, either.

Buck up, people.  Show some spunk.  Illegitimi non carborundum est.

Darn skippy.

Wednesday: Why Do It Be?

Posted on by February 10, 2010
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whyMamacita says:  I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, exactly a spring chicken these days, but when the time comes that I stop asking questions, they can bury me.  In fact, they should.  What possible use is a person who doesn’t ask questions and seek answers?  Can’t think of a thing.

I’m not presumptuous  enough to believe that all of my questions are of earth-shattering  importance.  I’m just saying that there are many things I don’t know.  Perhaps some of you DO know, and can enlighten me.  Much appreciated.

1.  Why are the Beatles, albeit 50% deceased, still as cool as ever, while so many once-loved , above-ground rockers now seem kind of sad with a tinge of desperation?

2.  How old is “too old” to use “The Logical Song” as a ringtone?

3.  Why do so many of my students think it’s actually OKAY to use those ignorant texting codes in a college essay?  Do they not write essays in high school?   Are those things acceptable at that level?  Because that’s so wrong. . . .

4.  How do people who lie, cheat, steal, betray, and walk out on people who trusted them,  live with themselves?  How can they sleep at night?  Why do we keep electing them?  If they do it to a spouse, child, or friend, they’ll do it to us.

5.  Why don’t people know that recipes that call for egg whites almost always work fine with the whole egg?  The only exceptions I’ve found so far are white cakes.  Even those will still taste great; they just won’t be white.

6.  Why do so many public schools brag about graduating students who scored high on a standardized test?  Why don’t they brag about graduating students who now have the necessary skills to live in the world and make it and themselves better?    Wait, I actually know the answer to this one:  Money, and because they aren’t.

7.  Why do some men pile their dirty clothes BESIDE the hamper, balance the new roll of toilet paper on top of the spindle, and tear open a box of cereal as though it were some kind of fight to the death?

8.  Where are my pie plates and pizza pans?  Family: please check your pantries.

9.  Why didn’t people pay attention in English class?  Don’t they understand that bad grammar and poor spelling make them appear to be, euphemistically speaking, too stupid to piss in a boot? (Gotta love those descriptive southern Indiana sayin’s.)

10.  Why do we allow our schools to give the lowest common denominator almost all of the attention, perks, and money, and pay almost no attention whatsoever to the kids who are average and above, polite, kind, nice to each other,  attentive, hardworking, musical, artistic, creative, who love to learn and would love to be able to go forward, above and beyond what the standardized curriculum allows them to?  Why?  How did we come down to this?  Shouldn’t it be the other way around?  I think it should be.

I might have included a few of my pet themes here, and I may have saved my biggest hobby-horse for last.

Bonus points if you know what “hobby-horse,” in this particular context, means.

Flatulence won't fill the tank.

Posted on by February 6, 2010
2

Jokes - Pull My Finger 01

Mamacita says:  When I was a little girl, Dad would often wink at Mom after dinner, and say “Now I’ve got gas; I guess I’ll go out and sit on the car.” And she would roll her eyes and say that HER family didn’t talk like that.

And I would be all happy because, hey. Free gas for the car. Maybe we can get ice cream with the gas money now. I was glad MY family talked like that. Free was good.

I am more than a little bit embarrassed to tell you that I was in the fifth grade before I realized what he was talking about.