Sunday, December 25, 2011
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
The Fix Is In
Now, with the Iowa caucuses so close, the media shows its hand and goes to assassinate the character of the only man I would even consider voting for: Ron Paul. I said it when Obushma gave all the nation's wealth to the banks. This country is dead. The media is just the establishment's voicebox. I don't usually allow myself to get so worked up, but this attack sickened me. The nancy boys in Washington will win again and keep sucking everything good out of this culture.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sing, Angel
Sing, angel, and tell of how Odysseus, on the eve of his fortieth year, driven and derided by vanity, did repent of pride even as he indulged it and despaired of ever being free.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Monday, August 1, 2011
On American Political Discourse
When will you all realize that it’s the other side that’s partisan? It’s the other side who are hypocrites. The other side is only posturing to court votes. The other side is pure evil. The other side is acting like Nazis. The other side is un-American. The other side wants to destroy the country. The other side is greedy and selfish. The other side is fanning fear. The other side isn’t a political philosophy, it’s a mental disease. The other side can’t face reality. The other side has always engaged in racial pandering. The other side are nothing more than domestic terrorists. The other side are a bunch of entitled crybabies. The other side cherry-picks facts to suit their agenda. The other side only represents a minority of Americans. The sheeple who vote for the other side don’t realize they’re voting against their own interests.
Well, I’d expect you to say that, being that you’re a loudmouth white-trash teabagging FAUX News-watching Republicunt Austrian School wingnut Koch-head conservatard. It’s all the right’s fault. The 2008 elections were a clear mandate. We’re in this financial mess because the top 2% don’t pay enough taxes. Your personal problem is that you can’t stand to see a black president.
Ahh, but your Alinskyite tactics won’t work on me, you screeching ghetto hoochie-mama socialist pond scum MSNBC-watching Dim-o-Crat Keynesian moonbat Soros-zombie libtard. It’s all the left’s fault. The 2010 elections were a clear mandate. We’re in this financial mess because the bottom half don’t pay any taxes at all. Your personal problem is that you’re too scared to admit a black president can fail.
SHUT the fuck up. ALL of you.
Never in world history have more retarded people called other people retarded in more retarded ways. Never have people called one another unintelligent while misspelling so many words: “Your not smart enough to notice their to stupid.” It’s Beavis on one side, Butt-head on the other. To observe this sort of discourse is to watch conjoined Mongolian idiots hocking loogies in one another’s face. We’ve reached rock-bottom on the dumbing-down.
-from Jim Goad at Taki
Well, I’d expect you to say that, being that you’re a loudmouth white-trash teabagging FAUX News-watching Republicunt Austrian School wingnut Koch-head conservatard. It’s all the right’s fault. The 2008 elections were a clear mandate. We’re in this financial mess because the top 2% don’t pay enough taxes. Your personal problem is that you can’t stand to see a black president.
Ahh, but your Alinskyite tactics won’t work on me, you screeching ghetto hoochie-mama socialist pond scum MSNBC-watching Dim-o-Crat Keynesian moonbat Soros-zombie libtard. It’s all the left’s fault. The 2010 elections were a clear mandate. We’re in this financial mess because the bottom half don’t pay any taxes at all. Your personal problem is that you’re too scared to admit a black president can fail.
SHUT the fuck up. ALL of you.
Never in world history have more retarded people called other people retarded in more retarded ways. Never have people called one another unintelligent while misspelling so many words: “Your not smart enough to notice their to stupid.” It’s Beavis on one side, Butt-head on the other. To observe this sort of discourse is to watch conjoined Mongolian idiots hocking loogies in one another’s face. We’ve reached rock-bottom on the dumbing-down.
-from Jim Goad at Taki
Saturday, July 23, 2011
From Cities of The Plain, by Cormac McCarthy
Your kind cannot bear that the world be ordinary. That it contain nothing save what stands before one. But the Mexican world is a world of adornment only and underneath it is very plain indeed. While your world...totters upon an unspoken labyrinth of questions. And we will devour you, my friend. You and all your pale empire.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
The Heart of the Matter, by Graham Greene
He took her wrists and held them furiously. He said, "You can't get out of it that way. I believe, I tell you. I believe that I'm damned for all eternity - unless a miracle happens. I'm a policeman. I know what I'm saying. What I've done is far worse than murder - that's an act, a blow, stab, a shot: It's over and done, but I'm carrying my corruption around with me. It's the coating of my stomach."
-Scobie, explaining his damnation to Helen
-Scobie, explaining his damnation to Helen
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Can't Get This Song Out Of My Head
By this propitiatory act, may the demons be placated and remove this song from my mental playlist. We ask this in the name of Fleetwood Mac.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Why I Quit Teaching - Part II - The Kids
I spent fourteen years teaching, mostly in upper elementary and middle schools. I endured the last year as a high school English teacher. That year definitely confirmed some notions that I had about the educational system.
Given the title of this post, you might think I am going to rant about how awful kids are today. Well, they are awful but I won't rant about the fact. I think they have probably been awful ever since adolescence was invented a hundred years ago so there is little new there for me to say in that direction.
My favorite students were, for the most part, those that did poorly in my class. This bothered me a great deal. It wasn't that they were unintelligent. In fact, these favorite students of mine were generally very bright. They just didn't buy into the bullshit set-up that higher education is or has become. Mostly boys, these students were simply putting up with school until they could join the military or get a vocational job. However, when I spoke with them, I could see and hear their innate intelligence and, in many cases, a sort of wisdom others might call street smarts.
My best students, the ones that kept their grades up and carefully reviewed all grade reports to make sure that they were accurate, were awful people. Sure, they possessed a certain body of knowledge and were able to complete assignments on time and more than adequately. But they were also uninspiring, boring and small-minded. Equally disenchanted with the educational system as my worst students, they had long ago surrendered to despair and dryly tapped out their lifeless writing assignments and other paperwork so that they could qualify for whatever scholarship or school they sought.
Of course, the student body did not exist in this perfect dichotomy. There were good students that were also pleasant people and plenty of scumbags that did poorly in my classes. But the trend noted above was significant and disturbed me all year.
Now, it would be easy to blame me for this issue and say that I should have struggled to inspire those favorite students of mine so that they would perform. And I admit I am not a perfect teacher and that maybe someone else could have turned things around. I certainly tried to do so. But in my opinion, after so many years in the classroom, the problem is with the system.
Given the title of this post, you might think I am going to rant about how awful kids are today. Well, they are awful but I won't rant about the fact. I think they have probably been awful ever since adolescence was invented a hundred years ago so there is little new there for me to say in that direction.
My favorite students were, for the most part, those that did poorly in my class. This bothered me a great deal. It wasn't that they were unintelligent. In fact, these favorite students of mine were generally very bright. They just didn't buy into the bullshit set-up that higher education is or has become. Mostly boys, these students were simply putting up with school until they could join the military or get a vocational job. However, when I spoke with them, I could see and hear their innate intelligence and, in many cases, a sort of wisdom others might call street smarts.
My best students, the ones that kept their grades up and carefully reviewed all grade reports to make sure that they were accurate, were awful people. Sure, they possessed a certain body of knowledge and were able to complete assignments on time and more than adequately. But they were also uninspiring, boring and small-minded. Equally disenchanted with the educational system as my worst students, they had long ago surrendered to despair and dryly tapped out their lifeless writing assignments and other paperwork so that they could qualify for whatever scholarship or school they sought.
Of course, the student body did not exist in this perfect dichotomy. There were good students that were also pleasant people and plenty of scumbags that did poorly in my classes. But the trend noted above was significant and disturbed me all year.
Now, it would be easy to blame me for this issue and say that I should have struggled to inspire those favorite students of mine so that they would perform. And I admit I am not a perfect teacher and that maybe someone else could have turned things around. I certainly tried to do so. But in my opinion, after so many years in the classroom, the problem is with the system.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Why I Quit Teaching –Part I
A few weeks ago I resigned my teaching position at the local public high school.
Whenever someone asks me why I did something, I usually tell them that it is an irrelevant question. (Yes, as you may have guessed, conversations with me are not any fun. Oh, they’re fun for me, of course.) When I worked as a volunteer in refugee shelters in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, people often asked me that question and that was when I came up with my snarky answer. But, while mildly off-putting, it’s the real answer for a few reasons.
First, the question is irrelevant because I never do anything for just one reason. In fact, I have multiple motives for just about anything serious that I do in life. I suspect other people are the same way but some of them are happy condensing all of their reasons into one glib remark. I’m not. Usually, there are so many reasons behind my actions that it would take a ridiculously long time to answer a question that probably was not asked in earnest anyway (my misanthropic tendency shows a bit, doesn’t it?). Sometimes, I am afraid to admit, I cannot even find the words to state my motives; so what is the point of answering?
Second, the reason I continue to do something is often completely distinct from the reason I began to do it. This was certainly the case in Juarez, when I worked in a Mexican homeless shelter called Casa Peregrino. I am pretty sure that I came there, fresh out of college, in order to save the world. I stuck around for a year and a half for a succession of reasons that eventually withered up and died before I quit and moved on. Sometimes, when asked the dreaded question, I would reply, “Ask me why I stay. I’m not the same person who arrived here last year, so there’s no point in telling you why he came.”
Third, I don’t like answering a question like that because, if it is asked in earnest, then the person will usually try to spar with me over a decision I have already made, and I don’t discuss things that I have already decided. For instance, if I told an inquirer that I left teaching because I didn’t feel that the public education system was properly serving children, then I might suddenly find myself in an argument about how I could change the system from the inside. (Picture me gagging in jest as I gesture toward my open mouth with my index finger.)
But I am going to try to work out why I have quit teaching twice in the last four years and, on this most recent occasion, in the middle of an economic recession.
Whenever someone asks me why I did something, I usually tell them that it is an irrelevant question. (Yes, as you may have guessed, conversations with me are not any fun. Oh, they’re fun for me, of course.) When I worked as a volunteer in refugee shelters in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez, people often asked me that question and that was when I came up with my snarky answer. But, while mildly off-putting, it’s the real answer for a few reasons.
First, the question is irrelevant because I never do anything for just one reason. In fact, I have multiple motives for just about anything serious that I do in life. I suspect other people are the same way but some of them are happy condensing all of their reasons into one glib remark. I’m not. Usually, there are so many reasons behind my actions that it would take a ridiculously long time to answer a question that probably was not asked in earnest anyway (my misanthropic tendency shows a bit, doesn’t it?). Sometimes, I am afraid to admit, I cannot even find the words to state my motives; so what is the point of answering?
Second, the reason I continue to do something is often completely distinct from the reason I began to do it. This was certainly the case in Juarez, when I worked in a Mexican homeless shelter called Casa Peregrino. I am pretty sure that I came there, fresh out of college, in order to save the world. I stuck around for a year and a half for a succession of reasons that eventually withered up and died before I quit and moved on. Sometimes, when asked the dreaded question, I would reply, “Ask me why I stay. I’m not the same person who arrived here last year, so there’s no point in telling you why he came.”
Third, I don’t like answering a question like that because, if it is asked in earnest, then the person will usually try to spar with me over a decision I have already made, and I don’t discuss things that I have already decided. For instance, if I told an inquirer that I left teaching because I didn’t feel that the public education system was properly serving children, then I might suddenly find myself in an argument about how I could change the system from the inside. (Picture me gagging in jest as I gesture toward my open mouth with my index finger.)
But I am going to try to work out why I have quit teaching twice in the last four years and, on this most recent occasion, in the middle of an economic recession.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Fifteen Years - The exile continues
That's me at graduation from the University of Arizona, Summer 1995. I'm on the right, still drunk from the night before.
February 2011, tending my youngest, who was in the throes of one of those scary fevers they get every once in a while, when you think their temperature might spike and you'll lose them.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Come My Little Son
Come my little son and I
Will tell you what we'll do.
Undress yourself and get into bed
And a tale I'll tell to you.
It's all about your daddy, he's
A man you seldom see,
for he's had to roam far away from home,
Away from you and me.
CHO: But remember lad, he's still your dad
Though he's working far away;
Working day and night upon the site
Of England's motor way.
To buy your shoes, your daddy built
A length of railway track.
He built a hydro dam to buy
The clothesupon your back.
The motor highway buys the food,
But the wages soon are spent,
And though we have to live apart
It helps to pay the rent.
CHO: But remember lad, he's still your dad,
And he's working far away,
In the cold and heat, eighty hours a week,
On England's motor way.
Sure we need your daddy here
And sure it would be fine
To have him working nearer home
And to see him all the time.
But beggars can't be choosers
And we have to pay our load
For we need the money your daddy earns
Working on the road.
CHO: But remember lad, he's still your dad
And he'll soon be here to stay
For a week or two with me and you
When he's built the motor way.
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