New Year’s Resolutions 2013

1.  Rather than try to lose 10 pounds (which, let’s face it, will probably not happen) I will try to lose 10        wrinkles. 

2.  Share my innermost thoughts with as many people as possible, including total strangers.

3.  Have a mad, passionate affair with the guy from the current Calvin Klein underwear ad.

4.  Think less and act more.  Or just think less.  Or just have a transfrontal lobotomy.

5.  Learn to speak Italian.  Or French.  Or Spanish.  (I’m really conflicted about learning a foreign language, but I do want to have illicit affairs with hot foreigners, so I have to start somewhere.)

a.  Amendment to #5:  Maybe it’s better if we don’t speak the same language, so I can just listen to the hot accent and not care what he’s saying.

6.  Do yoga rather than just thinking about doing yoga. 

7.  Watch every documentary available on Netflix.

a.  Make my own documentary about something totally irrelevant, like Pringles

8.  Live up to the example provided by my role model, Hunter S. Thompson.

9.  Get a PhD.  (Like buy one, not actually do all the work.)

10.  Move.  (Seriously, I have got to get the fuck out of here.)

11.  Write the great American novel.  (Or just finish anything I start, including my laundry.)

12.  Stop more often to smell the roses.  (And since my rose bushes are dead, I pledge to dig up other people’s smelly roses and bring them home.)

13.  Become the new John Hughes.

14.  Look as hot in a bikini as Phoebe Cates did in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.  (as if)

15.  Travel to a foreign country (preferably not as human chattel).

16.  Let go, and let God.  (Just kidding, I’m going to let Allah in this time.)

17.  Make more big, empty promises.

Guilt Sucks

Fucking Catholic guilt.  They must have really sunk their hooks deep when I was a child, because I can’t believe how effectively guilt makes life suck.  The thing is, not everyone reacts the same way to guilt.  Some people seem to actually be completely devoid of it.  HOW?!   I would pay any amount of money to reconfigure my brain so that I didn’t have to be eaten alive by the vicious expectations of other people.  I don’t want to give a shit about what other people think.  I just don’t know how.

Example #1:  My parents.  My mother is fond of saying that she doesn’t TRY to make me feel guilty, but if I DO … well, there must be a reason.  Really, mom?  Well played, lady.  All my parents have to do is sit in their house over there in Omaha and breathe, and I start to feel guilty about not going over there more often. 

 

Example #2:  Not even MY parent – my in-law parent.  I didn’t go to her extended family Christmas fete on Christmas day (we had just celebrated with her two days prior with dinner and drinks and gifts) so she sent me a note in the mail saying that the gift was “to be opened at her family’s Christmas!”  Are you kidding?!  Forgive me for wanting to be indulgent in my pajamas with my children on Christmas!  And since when are gifts conditional?

Example #3:  My brother is a piece of work.  I don’t like him.  I am made to feel guilty by just about everyone for not liking him and not tolerating his bullshit all the time.  I don’t understand why people think that just because two people are blood-related they should share some deep bond.  Some family is just people you happen to be forced into social interaction with more often than others.  That doesn’t necessarily mean I like them.   (Such sentiment, of course, makes me a bitch)

Example #4:  People who don’t understand what the word INTROVERT means try to make me feel guilty for not wanting to be a social butterfly.  I suck at small talk.  I don’t want to do it.  I don’t want to entertain people or try to keep up repartee about the weather under any circumstances.  It’s exhausting to those of us who aren’t chatty beings. 

Example #5:  I can’t even be a proper drunk.  I’d like to just go off the deep end like Hunter Thompson or Ernest Hemingway or Scott Fitzgerald (or even Zelda Fitzgerald) or Dylan Thomas, but the guilt gets to me every time!  I feel bad for drinking too much and then try to repent.  Stupid.  Maybe I should have gotten myself a crippling heroin addiction years ago when I had the strength.  Too late now. 

There are dozens of other examples, but it’s kind of just pissing me off when I write them down, so I’m going to navigate away and work on my screen play for a while.  (Another source of guilt, because I always feel like I should be doing something academic rather than whatever else I’m doing.)  Good job, Catholic priests and educators.  I can see how you managed to rule the world for a short period of time.  

Happy Christmas. 12/25/12

So this is Christmas.  What have you done?  Another year older.   Another just begun  …   

I have the following things:

·         a house in a safe, suburban neighborhood

·         food, clean water, and a war-free zone

·         an extended family who loves me

·         beautiful, intelligent children

·         a roaring fire in my fireplace

·         a new, $300 Bose Soundlink wireless ipod dock with thousands of songs to choose from

·         a brand new Keurig coffee maker that rocks out amazing brews at the push of a button

I do NOT have the following things:

• ·         a healthy marriage
• ·         a partner to spend my days with
• ·         friends with whom to share my life
• ·         children who respect each other
• ·         a life-location which suits my needs
• ·         freedom to walk away from any of the above problems

And so, I wonder on this lovely (and brutally cold) Christmas day, if this is as good as it gets.  I wonder every day, all the time if I should just suck it up and (like shitty medicine) take this life as it is, or if I should bail.  I really, honestly don’t know.  But I’m going to share a secret with you:  there’s only so much time in this life, and spending it alone is pretty terrible.  Being lonely and alone is deeply unsatisfying and difficult.  And I don’t know how to fix it.  Being with other people makes me exhausted, because I always feel like they just want something from me.  I want to have a friend who will come around and just hold my hand and watch movies with me.  No talking.  No expectations.  And then maybe we can make some nachos or something and go from there.  I’m so sad all the time, and I am fucking sick of it.  I don’t want to be sad – it’s tragic and boring and stupid.  I should be above such common stupidity.  And yet here I am … listening to Eddie Vedder do something relevant (make music and change people’s lives) while I sit in my chair in my basement talking to a computer screen.

How much difference does any of this make?  None?  Because my life has stalled.  Full stop.  

Druid Pagan Jesus Allah celebration

I would like to briefly rant about Christmas, Hanukkah, Druid Pagan Solstice, Kwanzaa and Ramadan.

What the fuck?

I spend an inordinate amount of time carefully choosing presents for the people I love, but my catholic guilt makes me feel bad for not buying secondary people presents, not buying some people enough presents, and not being in the properly festive mood.  Can someone PLEASE tell me how to get back to the Charlie Brown spirit of Christmas where I belong?  I hate to admit that the catholic elementary school taught me to properly sing carols and play Christmas music on the piano and make holiday crafts, whereas my agnosticism makes it largely impossible to get in the spirit.  I don't need either the Jesus birth scenario nor the ho-ho-ho bullshit - I just want to hug it out with the druid solstice.  I can't even manage to do that!  I don't feel like it is Christmas!!  How do I get there?!

I bought a bunch of cool shit for my kids, but my husband and I decided not to buy each other gifts, since we are a fucking sham of a couple.  This essentially means that I will not be receiving Christmas gifts from someone who loves me.  ( I realize my children love me, but I fund their purchases, which takes away from the generosity and foresight of a properly thought-out gift.)  I swear to god, my students have done a better job reading me than my husband will, because he's never home and has no sense of romanticism in his body.

Breaking point.  How can I love something so much and not be paired with a person/people who have no regard for what makes me happy?  I've done something terribly wrong, I think.

Newtown, CT: Life is Dangerous

28 people dead.  20 of them children.

I have said since year one of my current teaching assignment that I can picture the school shooting that might happen in my building.  I can see the stairwell where the shooter would start.  I can imagine how easy it would be to get a gun (or several) into the school.  I can even play the scenario out in my head in a hundred different ways.  Why?  Because I live in America, where the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States proclaims that we need an armed militia to protect ourselves against the potential threat of an out-of-control government.  And in the meantime, Americans use their ready access to guns to kill other, unarmed Americans.  Children.  Little kids who just went to kindergarten today to learn about words and numbers.  What kind of devolution of humanity is going on in the world?

My 11-year-old daughter went to school today and had a great day.  She graduated from D.A.R.E., met the mayor and the chief of police, listened to other kids proclaim their devotion to a drug-free life (however deluded that might be...).  She played in her first-ever band concert, with a solo on the bells.  She celebrated with her friends in various ways all day.  What she did NOT do was get shot.  Some crazy, fucking lunatic did NOT come into her school and shoot 20 of her friends, the principal, a counselor, and six other people.

How does any student, any teacher, any parent prepare themselves for such insanity?

They don't.

When the shooter comes in the building, I'm sure he or she (statistically, it's a he) is remarkably calm.  He has the guns, the ammunition, the weapons secured under a coat or a hoodie or in a bag.  He goes to the place where the most harm has been done to him or where he can do the most harm, and he retaliates for whatever harm he perceives has been done to him.  Innocent people die.  Well-intentioned people die.  People who have devoted their lives in the service of others die.  Children, who have yet to devote their lives to anything, die.  And for what?

If you have kids, hug them.  If you have parents, call them.  If you love anyone, let them know.  Because the bastards are out there, and they're armed with government-protected weapons to fucking mow us down when we least expect it.  Any generic 20-year-old man in America has some of the most ample opportunities of any person, any place in the entire world, and this particular person decided to take that social advantage and butcher a bunch of six-year-olds.  Ridiculous.  I'm glad he killed himself; I just wish he would have started with himself and left everyone else alone.

It's a travesty when people can't go to school or go to a movie without having the fear of a mentally ill psychopath shooting indiscriminately into the crowd.  Get your shit together, America.  Guns are being used to murder other people in this country ... a lot.  Are we Los Estados Mexicanos or Les Estados Unidos?

This (like Columbine and V. Tech, et al) makes me physically ill.

Puppies

I was kind of bummed out yesterday, so I took the advice of two of my students and went to play with puppies.  I convinced my son to go with me, looked up the place they told me about on my iphone, and headed off for some puppy lovin'.

My students had told me about their trip to the kennels, so I was excited.  I want to buy a dog, but I have no money, plus I'm not sure if I'm ready for all the hair and smells and shit in the backyard and whatnot.  So I decided to just go play for fun and I set off on an adventure.

To a fucking puppy mill.  God damn it!  What a depressing, horrible place!!  I wanted to take every single one of those puppies and throw them in my car and just randomly distribute them to families in suburbia.  I seriously almost shoved a little Rottweiler in my purse, because it was the cutest thing I've seen in a long time.  Here's the thing:  when the guy took the puppy out of the cage and put her on the linoleum floor, she couldn't stand up.  When I asked the guy what the hell was wrong with the dog, he said that she had never been on the floor before.  Seriously?!  Her cute huge puppy claws have only been on the cage floor?!  I just grabbed the puppy and snuggled it for like a half hour.   Look at it... how could you resist such a face?  The soulful little eyes are begging me to take her away.  (or maybe she just wanted to go back with her brothers and sisters - I'll never know)

I guess since it's Christmas-time, people will go in and buy these dogs, thus perpetuating the puppy mill.  They're cute, after all, and people want cute gifts during the holidays, even if those gifts were ripped away from their mothers much too early.

Show Me The Money

I want feedback on my sociological ideals. 

                Here’s what feedback looks like:  $.  How’s that for blatant materialism and capitalistic theory? 

                I want to know if I’m a good teacher.  I want to get PAID to do my job well.  For the love of god, someone please hire me or fire me or give me a raise or threaten to give me a pay cut BASED SOLELY ON THE WAY I DO MY JOB.

                I have a friend (okay, this friend is only 17 years old, but I don’t have any other friends, so don’t judge me.  Plus, he’s smarter and more mature than most adults I know.) and he is a staunchly conservative republican.  So … I usually totally disagree with all the bullshit propaganda that comes out of his mouth, even though I love to argue with him.  And even though his is deeply conservative and I am a flaming social liberal, I agree with him 100% that unions are destroying education.  When everybody gets paid the same amount of money based on years of service rather than based on performance, we are communist China.  I don’t understand how AMERICA (insert flags and declarations and pledges here) can tolerate such a fundamentally flawed system, ESPECIALLY when it involves THE CHILDREN (do you see all these emotional and logical appeals happening?!). 

                In my teacher inservice today, I looked around at the people in the room, and (having worked with these people and heard about what they do via other teachers and generations of students), I was thinking that I could probably accurately assign a legitimate dollar amount to the work they do as a teacher.  Some teachers work their asses off to make a difference.  Some teachers watch videos.  Some teachers teach … foods.  Physical Education.  Parenting.  These people are not reading 15 page research papers and evaluating research, writing, and critical thinking skills (which are then monitored by the school district and the state) on a daily basis.  Tell me how that’s the same job, equal pay. 

                I occasionally joke about teaching and say I should be a P.E. teacher instead so that I don’t have to work so hard all the time, working a full work day and then taking home papers to grade for hours and hours every night, BUT I would never teach one of those elective things.  The reason I teach is to (try to) make a difference in the lives and intelligence levels of students, not to sit on my ass and collect a paycheck (obviously).  But I’ll tell you this with absolute authority:  the path education is on is systematically killing the altruistic dreams of real teachers.  People who go into teaching as a mission do so because they are affecting people intellectually and personally, and the rise of the “education” degrees does nothing but compromise legitimate thinking in favor of “theories” presented by online “universities” which are simply collecting money from teachers in exchange for higher pay scales.  WHAT IS THE POINT?!  Stop paying teachers because they took a ridiculous education theory class about font size online and pay them based on what they do in the classroom instead.

                No other profession has such stupid, backwards rules for “advancement.”  Fucking socialists.

Love, actually

                I want to write something about teaching and how it pisses me off that I don’t get paid for my effort.   I want to write something about my marriage and how I want more than anything for him to just give up and leave me alone.  I want to write something about the fact that I’m getting fat because I don’t care about eating right or working out any more.  I want to write about how I used to hate television but now I watch TV all the time because I have no social life.

                Instead, I’m going to write about love.

                I’m pretty sure I’ve never properly been in love.  I have been in lust.  I have cared about people.  But I’ve never met a soul mate – man or woman.  I don’t even have a best friend.  When I was younger I had best friends, but through a long series of stupid betrayals, they all went away.  And then I never tried to make it happen again.  Too much work and no one seems to care about things the way I do (which is kind of ironic, because people think I’m cold and mean when the total opposite is true). 

                Let me tell you a story that only me and one other person know (I can do this because the internet is a vast wasteland of apathy, where people hide behind their computer keyboards).  On my wedding day, I drank about 6 bottles of champagne.  After the second or third, I told a boy I was vaguely in love with that it should have been him wearing the tuxedo that day.  He cried a little, but he didn’t fight for me then or before or after.  They never do.  I let him get away, because it was easier to go with the flow than to acknowledge reality. 

                My husband knew about this guy, and he didn’t really care.  Kinda fucked up, yes?  He said he didn’t need to worry, because me being in love with this other guy was like me being in love with myself, because we were basically the same person.  He was right about that, but is it so bad to love things you have in common with someone else?  Is there some problem with loving who you are?  I get that opposites attract, but I think that’s mostly true in terms of sex and social interactions.  My husband is great in social situations in that he can small talk a person to death.  I, on the other hand, am happier talking about politics and religion and philosophy and ideals and death.  As it turns out, most people don’t like chatting about the big stuff.  They’re content to live in the trivial. 

                Extrovert, introvert.  Superficial, deep.  Blissfully ignorant, Sadly informed. 

                I’ve done a lot of fucked up things in the past, but I think I’ve done my penance.  I think I deserve to be happy.  And if not, at least I deserve to not be angry and/or sad all the time.  I deserve to be free – doesn’t everyone?  Doesn’t everyone want to be madly, deeply in love?  Maybe it just doesn’t happen for everyone.  I would prefer consuming passion – periods of love and hate – to mediocrity and settling.  The generic middle-ground eats me alive.  I talk, no one listens.  I say what I need, and I get told it’s awkward to talk about feelings. 

                This part sucks.  What do you do when you’re done and they’re not?  How do you cut the cord without being the bitchy, cold, unfeeling one?  How do you tell someone that they are hurting themselves just as much by clinging on to something that’s gone?  Why is it so hard to admit failure at marriage, which is so obviously contrary to human nature?  A contract is not love - it’s a duty.  I want to see that contract dance in the flames and picture the flying embers as tiny wings to fly me free.  

Elections & Other Bullshit

            Another election cycle has come and gone – the incumbent president won because the other name on everyone’s ballot was a shape-shifting panderer whose political party was under the impression that money can buy everything.  Before the facts came in, my cynicism would have encouraged me to agree that the person with the biggest fistful of cash gets whatever they want, but it didn’t work out for the elitist rich people this year. 

            In an attempt to pretend to be “fair” super PACs were created to funnel money into critical elections at the local, state, and federal level.  Even on the surface these organizations are shitty and convoluted, because their sole purpose is to influence the population by whatever means necessary.  Propaganda machines.  Most of the media ads they created were not espousing the merits of their chosen candidate, but rather indicting the opposing candidate on some bogus charge or another.  Political poison.

            The only refreshing thing here is that the super PACS didn’t work.  Even $380 million couldn’t get Romney in the White House, which says a lot about his character.  (What says even more is that he lost in his home state and even among the Mormon voters.)  But $380 million was just thrown away by Republican donors.  Karl Rove spent $180 million on ads critical of Obama.  Didn’t work.  The Koch Brothers spend $66 million.  Sheldon Adelson spent $53 million.  The list goes on, ad nauseum. 

            What a disgusting waste of money.  I realize that it’s their money to throw away on whatever they want, but don’t people ever look past what benefits them personally and think to affect the world in a more altruistic way?  The Bill & Melinda Foundation spends its money on improving education, eliminating malaria, family planning, refining agriculture, and improving vaccines.  Where are these types of people in the Republican Party?  They seem to spend all their resources trying to take away women’s choices, denying civil rights to gay people, chasing out immigrants, and ensuring that the wealthy elite stay wealthy and elite. 

            What kind of momentous changes could that (wasted, because they lost) $380 million have made on average American families struggling to get by?  And how much did the Democrats pay to stay in office?  The total for both parties was somewhere around $6 billion, which is more than the GDP of some countries.  What a waste.  Consider the impact of $6 billion on any of the following things:

·         Cancer research

·         Make a Wish Foundation

·         Family shelters

·         The Red Cross

·         Food pantries

·         The Salvation Army

        That kind of money would change the game for a lot of people.  But no, it just got thrown away in the incessant quest for power and control (not to mention lifetime health benefits and a paycheck that never stops coming, even when you don’t have that job any more.)

        Here are some people who need your money more than politicians:  veterans, children in poverty, underinsured families, abused women, victims of natural disasters, schools, orphans, elderly shut-ins, the unemployed, small business owners, students, homeless people …  And I’m not talking about people who defraud the system, I’m talking about people who genuinely need a helping hand.  Come to think of it, that money would probably be better spent in a lump donation to the Humane Society.  At least dogs are loyal and cute.  

      I was just reading some of my old posts, and Jesus H. Christ on a stick, I have a problem.  I used to be kind of funny, and then at some point I just sank into the fucking mire of self-pity and angst.  Oops.
   
     I don't know what happened, really.  I guess my life just started to suck a little bit more, and then I started writing less and complaining more when I DID write.  It's kind of the like the diary thing - people usually only write extensively in a diary when things turn to shit.  When everything is good, they're too busy living life to sit down and write about all the happy thoughts.  So ... sorry about that.   (I think.)

     I wonder what I would have been like if I'd been born without this existential angst hovering like a cartoon cloud above my head.  Or maybe it's just all the alcohol and narcotics lingering in my spinal column.  I'll never know!!

     So to the single person (probably not even a single person at this point, because I've alienated every single demographic I can think of), um, sorry?   I suck.

     Love, Holden

Teaching & Unpaid Bills

                I am a teacher and no one cares.  If I do my job really well, no one complains.  If I do a shitty job, people complain.  Either way, I don’t lose my job, and I don’t get paid any more money.  As long as I don’t rape a student, get altered with students, or flagrantly cheat, I’m not going to get fired.  Conversely, even if I raise the average ACT score of my students five points, spend six hours a night grading papers, and provide in-depth counseling for the troubled, teenage souls in my building, I will not get one cent more in my paycheck than the fucking slacker who turns a movie on every day and hands their students answers to the summative assessments for their subject area. 

                Tell me again why I try so hard.  Tell me again why I read every book I teach for every class again every year.  Tell me again why I get grief for not being more present in the hallways and at school functions, because I teach in a discipline which sucks up all my free time. 

                I can’t even pay my bills.  I put my phone bill on a credit card this month, because I can’t afford to pay all my bills.  I have a job that I’ve worked my ass off at for 10 years, but I can’t get ahead, because my chosen profession is as a teacher.  If I wanted to semi-lobotomize myself and get a degree in administration where I do a whole lot of nothing other than coming up with BIG IDEAS for other people to implement, then I get paid some more.  But if I want to do the thing that (I think) I’m pretty good at, I have to be satisfied with being marginally poor for the rest of my life.  Awesome. 

                If you want to be a teacher, marry rich.  Or don’t have children.  And certainly don’t have any expectations that your life will be fabulous in any material sort of way.  All good has to be taken from the experience.  To be honest, that experience is worth it most of the time.  But it would be really great to be paid according to the outcome of what I do. 

                I guess the thing that really pissed me off about this was that I went grocery shopping yesterday, something which makes me incredibly angry, because it’s so god damn expensive.  But yesterday I went shopping at a shitty No Frills in Bellevue.  Totally run-down, crappy place.  And the food was more expensive!!  Someone tried to tell me it’s because they have to accommodate for the theft which occurs in poorer places, but I say, “bullshit!”  Rich, suburban people steal just as much as poor people!  And they are probably more blatant with their theft.  I will admit right now that I went to Walmart to buy mulch (in a wealthy suburb), and I loaded the mulch I bought into my car along with three bags of soil I didn’t buy.  I stole it.  Why?  I have no idea, other than that I didn’t have enough money and the opportunity was there. 

                The point is not that I’m a thief and a criminal, but that I have to ration the things I buy, because I can’t afford anything.  I’m going to either have to quit a job I love doing so that I can slowly climb out of crippling debt, or keep teaching and dig a financial hole so deep that my children will inherit nothing but unpaid bills and latent hostility. 

                It’s fucked up.  And because I have degrees in education and English, I can’t do anything to fix it.    

Emphemizing Education

Euphemization is not a word (at least that’s what Microsoft Word is telling me its annoying red underscore).  But if “to euthanize” means to kill something incurably ill, and a “euphemism” is a phrase used in place of a term that might be considered too harsh, then it follows that “to euphemize” to refuse to use direct verbiage about something which a person or institution is in the process of killing in order to deceive others.  So pay attention America, because schools are in the process of euphemizing real education.

I believe what we have is the classic bait and switch.  In the newspapers, we celebrate school districts which meet or exceed preset standardized test scores, and we deride those schools which fail to meet them.  We publish lists and numbers and statistics and rankings, either celebrating ourselves or pointing blame (whichever is more convenient and apropos to our personal circumstances). 

The “new thing” is ACADEMIES.  To put that in perspective, the “old thing” was MAGNET SCHOOLS or CHARTER SCHOOLS.   Yes, I realize that both of those are still around, but the educational march is continually to a new, unspecified drummer in order to keep people confused enough to be fooled by words placed in new contexts.  This renaming of things which were previously just called SCHOOLS is the first step in euphemization. 

To call a school (or a portion thereof) an ACADEMY is to imply a standard of excellence and specificity; for example, a HEALTH ACADEMY indicates students will be well on their way to becoming doctors.  An excellent choice, indeed, for students who want to be in the health profession.  My school offers such a program, after which students are awarded a CNA, allowing them to earn a solid paycheck right out of high school.  This seems like a lovely idea for motivated students who want a more tailored education, as they spend part of each school day at a local hospital. 

But it would be silly to stop there; where there is room for one ACADEMY, there is certainly room for dozens.  We also have an A2B ACADEMY in which students take specific courses taught by teachers with their subject MA, then graduate high school with an Associate’s Degree from a community college.  To sum up this ACADEMY:  students take courses they already would have taken, pay $25 apiece for each one, and jump over the first two years of college.  Not AP courses.  Not Honors courses.  Just some courses selected by the school. 

You see, classification is everything.  Euphemisms reign in education.  People with super-important degrees in EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION or CURRICULUM get paid to create ways for both their schools to look better on paper and for their students to be better marketed to society.  A win-win, yes?  Unless of course we consider the very real fact that college courses should not be the equivalent of high school courses.  If they ARE equal, then what exactly is the point of college?  An expensive delay of reality?  A huge Ponzi scheme to separate one of America’s most financially vulnerable demographics from his or her money?  (or to be more specific, from their parents’ money via bloated government loans)

We have a ZOO ACADEMY and a LEADERSHIP ACADEMY, which may be cool and fun, but they certainly don’t churn out zoologists or leaders.  But they sure do look good on resumes …  and after all, it doesn’t matter what you learn.  This is America – if we can prepackage it and sell it, then we’ve somehow won (even if no one even know what “it” is).    

Homecoming

Coming home.

I wonder where the word homecoming comes from.  Is it because a new school year has begun and students re-gather at their most common place and celebrate the new year?  Because school isn’t “home.”  So why “homecoming”? 

Last night was homecoming at my job, plus it was an alumni celebration, so the homecoming was, perhaps, a coming home for students who went away to college or moved somewhere else.  But again, it’s not “home” they’re coming to – it’s school, a place they all actively tried to escape for four years.  And those who are still currently students complain about being in school all week, but they will actively dress up and spend money for clothes and flowers and dinner in order to come “home” to their school on the weekend. 

It makes me wonder about the import of a high school.  The ambivalence teenagers have about their schools is as interesting a question as any philosophical conundrum.  They hate it.  They love it.  They want to get away.  They want to come back.  They hate school work.  They love having learned something. 

Perhaps it’s true that you can only hate something or someone you love, otherwise you’re apathetic towards it.  Not caring is very different than hating.  Students say they don’t care, but they care very much.  They care when their time is wasted.   They care when they get the high score.  They care when people make fun of them.  They care when no one listens.  They care when they say something apropos and it’s noticed.  They care about the minutiae.

They pretend not to care … but they actually care very much.

Everyone wants a place to call home, even if that place has some painful memories.  The truth is that high school is a drag.  It’s boring and long and time-consuming and redundant.  But.  High school is also the nucleus of four years of life.  It is the alpha and omega, whether you want it to be or not.  You have to go (the state mandates it) and you have to pass (you will not get a job).  You have to try to fit in (you will have no friends) and you have to pander to the opposite sex (you will not get laid). 

I understand why I have never gone to a high school reunion.  It’s not because I hate those people I went to high school with or because I was an outcast in high school.  I always thought I blew off reunions because I didn’t care about those people.  To a large extent, I don’t care about those people, but for me it’s more like a statement about coming home.  I found a different home.  And sometimes, it’s not necessary to revisit the past.  Some people are very happy in the past – I am not one of them.  I am happier in the future.  I would LIKE to be happy in the present tense, but I haven’t figured that one out yet. 

One of these days, I will find the spot that is ground zero of home.  Until then, I will continue to try to become.  Home.  

Pariah

Heartbreak opens onto the sunrise for even breaking is opening and I am broken, I am open. Broken into the new life without pushing in, open to the possibilities within, pushing out. See the love shine in through my cracks? See the light shine out through me? I am broken, I am open, I am broken open. See the love light shining through me, shining through my cracks, through the gaps. My spirit takes journey, my spirit takes flight, could not have risen otherwise and I am not running, I am choosing. Running is not a choice from the breaking. Breaking is freeing, broken is freedom. I am not broken, I am free. 

Fill in the Bubble

                I am a teacher, and I would like to be fired by my school district.  Please.  Fire me.  Let all of the teachers reapply, and then hire me if I am the best choice.  And then my school district can pay me on a merit-based system, just like every other job that has legitimacy in society.  Teaching may be a government job, but I don’t want any special favors.  I want my profession to be respected by society – not pitied or congratulated, but valued.  Doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, teachers.  The word “teaching” does not follow, does it?  Teachers are basically low-level government employees.  No clearance, no pay. 

                Should we take a step back and acknowledge that teachers are responsible for roughly 8 hours of a child’s life every day?  Do we really want to hand over our children to teachers who are half-assing their job?  I have three children in school:  one in college, one in high school, and one in elementary school.  I work in a school.  I went to school.  I have seen hundreds of teachers in my life.  Just like in any profession, there are effective teachers and shitty teachers.  I don’t see why it’s so hard to pay the effective teachers what they’re worth and fire the shitty teachers.  Yes, it might take a few years to weed out an ineffective teacher, but that is true in any profession.  And please tell me what other profession has tenure so that employees can’t be fired because of the backing of some big, bad union?!  Being a teacher should not make a person immune to the workforce rules.  People need to earn their job not just once, but over and over.  A trial lawyer would not have a job if he or she kept losing cases, just like a teacher should not have a job if his or her students are not learning.

                Having said that … how do we tell if a teacher is doing his or her job well?  Test scores?  Yes and no.  The test scores WOULD be an excellent indicator IF people didn’t suck.  But they do, so … teachers (SOME teachers) will cheat.  They will do whatever it takes to get the good test scores.  If their pay is based on those scores, there is even more incentive to cheat.  Just last year, we had teachers giving students the state writing prompt beforehand so their students would do well when the actual test happened.  Teachers should know that cheating is totally fucked up and doesn’t represent learning, yet if pay is tied to scores, the shiftiest “teachers” will get paid the most money.  Maybe they ought to correlate the in-class and state test scores to the ACT and SAT to see if these kids really know what the hell they’re talking about.  (How you do that, I don’t know.)

                I know that I am supposed to get “observed” a couple of times a year, but it’s a miracle if that happens.  I think that teachers should be observed all the time.  I know that’s inconvenient for administrators, but teachers act differently when an evaluator is in the room.  Is it really so ridiculous to acknowledge this?!  I try not to change how I act, but the presence of an “outsider” affects every teacher.  I don’t think my students would say I’m terribly different, but there is still a subtle change in behavior on my part.  (And theirs…)  If teachers didn’t know when they were being evaluated, that would be ideal.  I know it sounds a little Big Brother-ish, but surprise attack these teachers and see how they teach on a day-to-day basis!  Video tape them.  Keep them honest.  Don’t schedule a date to observe them so they can pander to the person watching.  Let them know that the community is not fucking around!  As a parent, I want to know what my child is learning during the day, and I want to know how he or she is being treated.  Is the teacher an asshole?  Is there a lot of wasted time?  Are the students being taught to a test or being taught something valuable? 

The biggest problem here is that some parents are going to (potentially) react badly to certain concepts from the class (especially in high school) that they don’t agree with.  I think this where parents need to let go for a minute.  I may not agree with all the things my children’s teachers teach them, but I am also a parent, so my JOB as a parent is to talk to my children about these things and give them an alternative perspective.  I cannot shield my children from ideas with which I don’t agree.  I don’t WANT to shield them from those ideas.  It’s the acceptance of a conflict of ideas that makes America a great place!  When we shut down opposing viewpoints, we insulate ourselves to the point that the children are unprepared to properly participate in society when they come of age.  A strong and confident child (read:  parent) is not afraid of people who don’t agree with them. 

Americans need to think about what they want from the teachers in their country and then fall in line behind it - NOT based on personal or religious ideology, but based on the value of knowledge in and of itself.  Socrates drank hemlock and killed himself rather than rebut his teachings publicly; that’s how it should be.  Teaching is a mission, not just a job; and those people who are doing it as just a job because they couldn’t decide on anything else need to get the fuck out of Dodge.  Work at Starbucks or Whole Foods or something, but get out of the way of those of us who want to change the world by making people more informed and more intelligent.  I’m not talking about making students believe one thing or another; I’m talking about teaching people how to think, something which is largely absent from most teachers’ curricula. 

Think about who you want your children to be – what you want your children to know – and make these people who teach your children (and the administrators who dictate their bullshit curriculum) RESPONSIBLE for what they get paid for every day.  Pay attention, get the qualified people in the classroom, keep them accountable, and then let the magic happen.  Learning doesn’t have to be an antiquated thing; it’s actually quite valuable in the 21^st Century.   

PTSD

                Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder:  Virtually any trauma, defined as an event that is life-threatening or that severely compromises the emotional well-being of an individual or causes intense fear or anxiety.

                For some people, life itself is the traumatic event, but there’s a really good case to be made that marriage can be as damaging as any other situation where the emotional well-being of individuals hangs in the balance.  People commit to living a life together through good and bad, but sometimes the bad bits are so damaging and overwhelming that recovery is nearly impossible.  Every day brings a new opportunity for the full frontal assault, or the unseen ambush, or the subtle psychological torture that husbands and wives unleash on each other.  Only people who know each other so well can know how to devastate each other to the very core.

                Some of the symptoms of PTSD are:  insomnia, nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, and depression.  One of the most common ways people cope with PTSD is substance abuse (self-medicating), because they don’t know what else to do.  And of course, when that one glass of wine turns into four glasses and an Ambien, shit gets ugly.  A torrent of repressed animosity comes pouring out, and all the hurtful things get piled on. 

                I suppose the partners in any marriage take turns being the “right” or “wrong” one, but in a marriage gone sour, the wounds are so deep that all reactions tend to be defense mechanisms.  Rather to hurt than be hurt again, I suppose.  Or maybe our apathy and/or ambivalence just become a conditioned response to the ongoing battle.  Nothing gets left in the past – we subconsciously drag all our shitty feelings into the present, even though they should have been buried long ago. 

In a way, I wish I just had a terrible headache, but I don’t; I just have a soul ache, and I want it taken away, whatever the cost.  I have given up.  I have not been able to beat the forces opposing me, so I guess I should consider joining them.  I suppose if that means I will never again utter a cogent sentence, or think a sardonic thought, or trade banter with colleagues or friends, then so be it.  I guess it’s necessary to sacrifice everything that I have come to think of as me for the sake of my marriage and family unity.  Maybe that’s what marriage is:  the death of the personality.  I should have killed myself, as it were, years ago.  It’s like experiencing my own personal Jonestown. 

Sometimes being married feels like having a knife plunged into your back.  Slowly.  So slowly, in fact, that you only notice it one day when you feel a nagging, persistent pain in your back, or side, or head; and when you explore the source of the throbbing discomfort, you feel the hilt.  And then all the symptoms seem to fall in place, and you recognize that the actual stabbing happened a long time ago – it’s just the alarming amount of leaking blood that’s a recent discovery.  While that analogy might seem melodramatic, the pain that accompanies a failed relationship is just as real as any professional hit.  (Actually, that last part doesn’t work, because a professional would kill his or her mark fast and efficiently – it’s all of us amateurs making the death so painful.) Either way, it’s disconcerting and it sucks. 

Julianne Moore said it pretty well in the movie The Kids Are Alright:

“… the bottom line is marriage is hard. It’s really fuckin’ hard. It’s just two people slogging through the shit, year after year, getting older, changing — it’s a fucking marathon, okay? So sometimes, you know, you’re together so long you stop seeing the other person; you just see weird projections of your own junk. Instead of talking to each other, you go off the rails, and act grubby, and make stupid choices … And sometimes you hurt the ones you love the most, and I don’t know why.” 

Whoever wrote that movie gets it.   I don’t feel like there is any moral to this story or insight to be taken from it.  I don’t live in a slum in India.  My husband doesn’t beat me.  I am allowed to drive a car and wear what I want.  I am not a refugee in a civil war.  My house has not been razed by a tropical storm.  What do I have to complain about?  An unsatisfactory interpersonal relationship?  Fuck it, oh well. 

Whatever

                I want to care; I really do.  But I’m tired of trying to care enough for everybody else too.  It often seems like the things that are important to me are not important to the people around me.  Do you know how frustrating that is?  If you do, for god’s sake, let me know, because I feel totally alone in that capacity.  No one fucking gets it.  People with their bullshitty fake small talk make me so crazy.  Crazy, like I want to drill a hole in the top of my skull and let all the crazy out.  Crazy, like I want to voluntarily commit to an institution or a rehab clinic just to get away from the mundanity of the life that I created.  (And yes, that last bit is the knife in the side – the things which kill me slowly are that which I have created for myself.) 

                I wish that I could be one of those people who push all the bullshit aside and just be happy.  One of those Christiany, optimistic people who take it one day at a time or celebrate in the little things god gave them or whatever Christians do.  (I might be thinking of Alcoholics Anonymous…)  I can’t do it!  First of all, I like the dark side of me – it’s the place that makes me happy (if that makes any sense).  And secondly, I am fundamentally certain that all the compromises in my path of life (made consciously – all of them) were bad decisions.  I sold myself short over and over again.  And I have tried to make amends with that and just live the life I chose for myself, but I can’t.  The people we surround ourselves with are our lives, and … well, I chose wrong.  I compromised.  I settled.  I was wrong.  And it kills me a little bit every single day. 

                Certain people who read this blog say stupid, simplistic shit to me about changing my life.  I would like to say to them:  “Fuck you.”  Change your own life and stop fucking reading my blog in order to find out dirt about my life.  If you really want to talk to me, call me or something.  Don’t fucking read this blog and then judge me from outside.  Navigate to another place and hyper-manage your kid’s lives or something.  Go away.  And don’t talk shit about other people just so you can feel better about yourself.

                Do you see what I mean?  Do you see how the anger takes over?  It’s because I have no one to share my life with who really cares.  I have me.  Oh, and me.  And since no one else really cares; I don’t care anymore either.  I’ll do my job, and do it as best as I can, and I’ll try to impart some knowledge to my kids, and then I’ll die.  Pretty cool, yeah?  A great life plan.  My secondary job for now is to just maintain a level of consistency so my children can live without too much undue stress, and wait until it can be my turn to live my life again.  Hopefully I’ll be able to breathe in life again before I die of aggregated stress or skin cancer.  It just depends on how soon I’ll be able to let go.

                It’s so cliché, but I wish I would have known how all those little compromises would add up to such a painful resolution.  And a huge part of me is glad that I refuse to accept mediocrity in my personal life.  I deserve better.  We all deserve the dream, so why do so many of us sell is short just to make life easier in the short term? 

                I sure don’t know.  And neither do the haters out there who pretend they have their shit together all the time.  

Pussy Riot

                What a great name for a band, yeah?  Except if you’re in Russia.  Oh, and except if you sing songs with anti-Putin messages in front of a Russian Orthodox Church.  What the fuck were you thinking, girls?  You don’t live in America!  You can’t just park your ass in front of a church and start saying what you think!  (or singing it, for that matter).  People in Russia don’t fuck around with religion; Russia sucks.  They need SOMETHING to keep them hoping for a better tomorrow, and it’s called heaven.  Russia is such a shitty, cold, poor country that people don’t even want to leave, because thinking about leaving makes them tired.  And cold.  And hungry.

                I get what these girls were trying to do – draw some attention to the fact that Putin was stealing back the presidency of Russia – but what did they think was going to happen after they staged their little protest?  Putin is ex-KGB!  He ENJOYS fucking people up!  (A lot.)

                So what are they being charged with?  Hooliganism.  That’s fucking outstanding.  We need to get that labeled as a crime over here in America.  Before, during, and after every Nebraska Cornhusker game (or any other sporting event, I suppose), the entire crowd would be subject to arrest.  Adds a little spice to sports, yes?  Imagine how many people would be arrested at international soccer games!

                The “victims” in the case are people who work at the church.  They were so offended by the heresy, that they pressed charged (egged on by Vladimir, I’m sure).  The victims’ statement talked about how the secular parts of Russia were ruining it for all the religious people.  As it should be, religious people!  Take your heads out of your asses!  You live in Russia, and you’re fucked!  Praying about it won’t make anything better, nor will persecuting (prosecuting) young girls who were dumb enough to speak up. 

                Let me put it simply:  you can’t hide like an ostrich up god’s ass and pretend like the people who don’t buy into religion aren’t there.  Why be offended?  If you’re so right about heaven and hell and whatever else, just be happy that all those OTHER noisy motherfuckers will be burning in hell soon. 

God (Allah, Buddha, Mother Tree…)  Bless America and the First Amendment!

On Getting Old

When I was young:

• ·         People could smoke on airplanes.  Then the airlines decided that not everyone loves the carcinogens in their bodies, so they made a smoking and nonsmoking section (how fucking stupid is that … ON A PLANE?).

o   Also, airports were pretty cool places once upon a time.  There weren’t strip searches and metal detectors and Islamic terrorists.  The worst it got back then was getting seated next to someone who took full advantage of the free liquor in first class and drank for five straight hours.

o   Oh, and you used to be able to actually extend your legs in a plane.  And reclining your seat didn’t mean hip dysplasia for the person behind you.

• ·         Smoking was pretty cool.  I don’t remember if there were warning labels on cigarettes when I first started smoking, but you weren’t scorned from society like people are now.  I think the last time I bought cigarettes, I was pissed that the cost was nearing $3 a pack.  What it is now with all the sin taxes?  $15 or something?  Thank god I quit when I did, huh?
• ·         Since my dad worked for United Airlines, we flew to Hawai’i several times.  We had to dress up to get on the plane.  We couldn’t sit in first class if we didn’t have stockings on (the girls, that is).  Rule #1 for flying was dress nicely.  Obviously, people don’t subscribe to that any more:  flip flops and sweatpants.  It’s like a bus now.
• ·         Underage drinkers could sneak into bars/buy beer at gas stations.  It was just easier then.  The girl with the biggest boobs would go try to buy the liquor (it was NEVER a boy who tried).  I would say I had about an 85% success rate back in the day.  Not too shabby. 
• ·         Seat belts were not required.  A lot of cars back then didn’t even HAVE seat belts built into them.  My head went through a front shield window when I was about 12, but you didn’t hear me lobbying congress for better safety! 
• ·         I grew up with only three channels of television.  Just stop for a moment and try to remember when people actually did things and had thoughts that weren’t implanted by the media!  I remember being quite excited when a 4^th channel was added (though I can’t remember what it was). 

o   AND!  I actually remember the day MTV went on air.  Video Killed the Radio Star – terrible song, but the sentiment was there.  That’s fucking old.  Young people today don’t even realize that the M in MTV is for music, because all that’s on that channel is “reality” TV.

o   Oh, and back in my youth, “reality TV” was called the news. 

• ·         I used to listen to the radio.  And because my mom didn’t buy shit like music (she was ridiculously cheap, plus music was a luxury item), I would sit by the stereo speakers with my hand-held recorder and record the songs I liked from the radio.  (Jesus, I sound like a fucking fossil.)  But it was worth the distorted tape recording (yes, I said “tape”), because I had caught that song the moment it was on.  (Something which seems really stupid now when I think about it, but whatever.)
• ·         We had a record player in our living room – if I’m being honest, I was actually a piece of furniture, like a cabinet with a phonograph in it (Jesus Christ, and my parents were so old that they had 78 rpm albums!  I bet you don’t even know what that is!  Wait, I can up that times two.  We had an eight track player in our basement, and my first car has a cassette player in it.  Hell yeah!  Talk about the speed of light!
• ·         In my bedroom, was a bed.  And my clothes.  Seriously, that’s it.  I didn’t have any other shit in there.  No toys, games, televisions, video games, not even books.  It was a bed.  And when I was really little (before my sister moved out & we had to share a room), I used to grind my teeth like no other (apparently), which led to a direct correlation of my sister wanting to kill me with her bare hands. 
• ·         We had block parties.  I don’ t know how else to explain it but to say that we put cars and/or huge picnic tables at both ends of our block so no traffic could get through, and we barbequed and ran around like wolves all night.

o   Speaking of which, all the young-ish people in the ‘hood would play kick the can or flashlight tag or some such other excuse for running around like hellions long after the street lights went out.  I would often leave the house when I got up and come back periodically for food, but otherwise roam un-chaperoned around my neighborhood all day.  My parents didn’t know where I was.  They didn’t care!  As long as I wasn’t underfoot, I could go play in the huge drainage ditch at the park (which I often did).  People were a lot less uptight then (and don’t try to tell me the world was a less dangerous place then, because it wasn’t – ask an altar boy). 

• ·         I had a paper route (okay, yes, it only lasted a few months), but my mom was like the paper lady in our neighborhood, and tons of kids had paper routes.  They got off school and walked around with the paper.  They got up at 5am on the weekends to deliver people’s papers to them.  And they didn’t (usually) bitch about it.  If you wanted money, you earned it, or you didn’t get shit. 
• ·         When I had to “look things up”, I used the red, leather encyclopedia set in my basement.  Think about that for a second. 

I’m starting to sound like an 80-year-old curmudgeon, which was not my point.  I was just thinking about all the ways in which the world has changed over the past 40 years, and it’s not unsubstantial.  The fact that my first car was a 1968 Mustang fastback with pictures of horses on the interior seats (which I promptly wrecked) crossed my mind earlier today when I was wondering how important gas mileage is when buying a car. 

Oh, memories.  

Things That Piss Me Off

• ·         Gender Expectations:  Why is it that society is so much more accepting of older, average-looking men than older, average looking women?  Look at the movies as the only example you need.  Lumpy dude hooks up with the hot girl – it’s NEVER the other way around.  Why can the guy be balding and paunchy, but the girl has to be tight and hot?  Such a bullshit double-standard.

o   Plus it’s bullshit when people stop trying to look good after a certain point in life.  They just give up and start wearing sweatpants and try to ignore the fact that they can’t see their lower body any more.  Brush your hair! Floss! Wax your chest!  Shave your back hair!  Treat your wife as well as you treat that slutty girl you work with!  Pretend like you care about the way you present yourself to the world!

• ·         Reality TV:  It’s not real, people.  (And as a sub-point…)

o   Television, which is making my children stupid, vapid, shadows of who they could be.  Hobbies are being replaced by cable TV and internet videos.  At least make your own fucking video to post online (preferably not one of you doing something stupid and/or illegal).  Sing a song, WRITE a song, play an instrument, do something that makes you a better version of yourself. 

o   P.S. Being on television doesn’t make you an expert on ANYTHING.  So shut the fuck up.  (Oprah, Dr. Phil, Dr. Drew, Tyra Banks, et cetera)

• ·         Most American’s ideology that all of the problems they face on a daily basis are not their fault.  Most Americans are so deluded that they believe all the bullshit shoved down their throats by the media (and themselves).  “I” can’t be fat, because there’s somebody fatter than me over there.  “I” don’t eat food that’s bad for me, because the commercial for this snack says it’s healthy!  “I” am not addicted to these prescription drugs, because my doctor told me I should take them (which certainly has nothing to do with the pharmaceutical companies lining their pockets). 
• ·         Dysfunctional Families:  ALL families are dysfunctional to some extent.  Nobody goes home to a perfectly functional environment.  Any time you put a bunch of people in a house with each other, there is going to be friction, fighting, and anger.  (Leading into…)

o   Marriage:  what a loaded pile of shit.  One of the few socially acceptable relationships wherein people don’t have sex, argue incessantly about inane bullshit like dinner or furniture, and generally harbor a bottomless well of resentment and anger pieced together brick by murderous brick over years and years of both real and imagined slights and emotional warfare.  (Thank you, Denis Leary.)

• ·         Blind Allegiance to Sports Teams:  It’s a fucking game – get over it.  And the Olympics?  Yes, it’s fun to watch, but I could give a shit less who wins.  I generally pull for the underdog or whoever is hotter. 
• ·         Mexicans:  Actually, it’s not the Mexicans that piss me off, it’s the Americans who act like America would be the same without Mexicans.  “Let’s build a wall,” the assholes scream.  Who would build the wall?  Mexicans.  Because (generally, and not be stereotypical) immigrants work harder than lazy, fat Americans who sue McDonald’s for making them fat.  (“Fatter”, sorry.)
• ·         Liars.  How hard is to tell the truth, really?  For some people, apparently, honesty is something they are incapable of.  They can look you straight in the eye and lie about something as heinous as cheating or as insubstantial as leaving dirty dishes in the sink.  When you ask those bastards who left the partially eaten ham sandwich on the living room table, they will look you in the face and say they don’t know (even though you watched them set that sandwich there the day before). 
• ·         People Who Can’t/Won’t Control Their Children:  Recently I was on an airplane.  If you’ve even been on a plane, you already know where this story is headed.  The row behind me consisted of a lady and her three children, perhaps about ages 4 to 10 or so.  Those little bitches were SO annoying.  Three and a half hours of whining, bitching, and/or screaming about every leg of the flight.  On descent into Omaha (my headache was in full bloom by this point), the little one keeps whining, “ow!”  Owie!”  (Am I even spelling that right?)  Because her ears were popping.  For 10 fucking minutes this little brat cries, while her mother says, “maybe you should suck your thumb.”  “Maybe you should chew some gum.”  Just shove the gum in her mouth and shut her up!  It would have taken about five seconds to work and she would have been quiet.  Instead, the mom tells the stewardess at the end of the flight how cute her little girl is and what a great little flier she is.  The carry-on dog under the seat beside me didn’t make a peep the whole flight and he wasn’t even drugged.  

o   Subpoint:  children in grocery stores.  Shut your kid up.  No one cares if little Johnny wants a chocolate bar.  Either buy it or don’t, but stop arguing with him and both of you shut up.  Oh, and the reason your child is so fat is that every single thing in your shopping cart is processed.  Maybe that’s affecting his attitude.

Just a few things … I’m sure there will be more to follow. 

Once again, to denounce rumors that I am angsty and angry, I LOVE RAINBOW AND BABY SEALS!!  J