Half a Shift is Better Than None

Well, the half day shift is over; I got a shower and some coffee, and it's time to put a post up here on the world famous blog. I'm unaccountably tired after working today. Maybe it's just the vibe of working at a junior high school, or middle school, as they now call it.

The atmosphere at an elementary is vastly different: it's overflowing with energy, and optimism. Jr. High is high voltage pubescent anxiety. 'Cool' is a commodity worth the price of souls, principles, betrayals, and cruelty. Conformity to the unspoken, unwritten, but nonetheless sharply defined parameters of 'cool' is a survival skill for kids that age. The line between those who have it, and those who don't might as well be an electric fence.

Jr. high is the age where the girls who drew the 'pretty card' in the genetic lottery become aware of it, and vain over it. And it is also the age where girls who drew the 'plain card', or the 'plain and fat card' come to realize that the look worshiped on magazine covers, and TV shows is now, and forever out of reach. The boys, and the pretty girls generally have no qualms about rubbing the plain ones' noses in it. I watched one of the noon duty aides escorting one of the crushed and sobbing plain and plump ones off the field during lunch. "I hate middle school," she wept.

I would note that the egalitarian, and far more casual standards of dress and grooming contribute to the division, rather than erase it. Everyone- all the boys, and ninety percent of the girls wear the same jeans, and t-shirt uniform. Forty years ago, when I attended the same school, all the girls were required to wear dresses. Boys could wear jeans and T's but only the 'hard guys' did, and they were a small minority. Slacks and button shirts were the norm. The less attractive girls could compensate and even compete by being sharply dressed, and groomed. In the Mao-Suits that kids wear today the raw, unenhanced material they were born with is all they have to put on display.

And I noticed a kid with a black t-shirt featuring a monocolor portrait of George Bush, and featuring a "NOT MY PRESIDENT" caption. And another with a T that had "OBAMA 44" printed across the shoulders like a football jersey. The entire front of the shirt was a full color silkscreen of Barack Hussein O at the podium emblazoned with the presidential seal, and big white letters reading "Commander in Chief."

Tell me, my adult friends, did you ever in your life wear a shirt promoting, or insulting a president? But then again, keep it in perspective. This was two kids out of a schoolful.

These are kids who grew up wearing bicycle helmets. They are kids who have grown up fearing household chemicals, global warming, and second hand smoke. They are kids who have been raised with hundreds of channels on the cable TV, and not a one of them deviating from the progressive party line. They hear the party line in the plots of their cartoon shows, sitcoms, and documentaries. They are kids who are growing up believing global warming is the world's most serious problem, and that being a racistsexisthomophobe, or an islamophobe is tantamount to growing up ignorant and evil.

But don't get me wrong, here. They still study Anne Frank.

And the other night when I was working one of the elementaries I walked into a classroom with an entire bulletin board covered with posters and pictures of the history unit on The Ancient Hebrews. It had the Ten Commandments. It had a big old map tracing the Israelites journey from the Passover to the Promised land, with all the major events in the Torah pinpointed,and explained. I noticed a gallery of Time Magazine' presidential Man of the Year covers, and Obama's was conspicuously absent. They had some stuff on ancient Egypt, and a little bit about Mesopotamia, but it was just that- a little bit.

So like I say, I don't wish to key some hand wringing screed about this lost and brainwashed generation of mindless progressive robots being indoctrinated in the Orwellian ministry of relative truth. They are also growing up computer savvy, and internet savvy. They have access to the Truth, and the web of coincidence will draw many to it. God can figure out the internet, and use it as a magnet for the iron hearts of those receptive.

For me- I'm looking at a vastly diminished workload coming up, and a vastly diminished income to go with it. But blogging is cheap. Bicycle riding is cheap. And I'm sure I can scrape up a buck sixty here and there for a cup at Starbucks, and the opportunity to shoot the breeze with friends. Life could be far worse.

Anyway. I'm hungry, and I'm going to go fix up some dinner

JWM

The Good the Bad and the Munchies

I got a call from the boss early this afternoon- one of those bad news/ good news kind of things. The good news was I have a half a day filling in at the junior high tomorrow, which is a nice way to end out the week. The bad news is the same kind of bad news that a whole boatload of folks seem to be getting these days. There won't be any work this summer. And for the best part there won't be any more night assignments for the foreseeable future. They won't be bringing in a night time sub until the third day of absence. Considering that the rooms get cleaned every other day, that means if I do get a night shift it's going to be walking in on a serious mess. On the sorta' bright side, I'll still get first call on whatever day shift work is available, and since there won't be night subs, they're going to stop letting the night guy grab the occasional day shifts and let their regular runs be subbed out. Small things to be grateful for are better than no things to be grateful for. Still, it means our already precarious financial situation got more precariouser than it used to was.

But after all, as it says on the sidebar, I'm a fully Bobtized member of Raccoon Order, subject to all the rights and privileges usually associated with a holy fool. So this kind of stuff won't get under my skin at all. Oh, no. Not one bit. Not one itsy bitsy, shitty as all get out, total piss off bit.

I'll just take it in stride, and hope there are no lower life forms in striking distance of my shoe.

And Booger the cat just decided to join me here, taking a seat on the chair at my right, and purring away, just to let me know that if all else fails, she's still there to offer her all important cat support. Good ol' kitty.

And I did an odd thing this morning. Back in '90 when I bought my Harley, my mother decided it would be a nice Christmas gift to turn me on to ten shares of stock in the Motor Company, a two hundred dollar investment at the time. I held on to the stock while it split, then split again, and split again for a third time. The two hundred dollar investment grew to darn near ten thousand bucks worth, and I cashed all but the original ten shares out in '04 to put a on new roof, and paint the house.

Well, as we all know, this is the dawning of the age of Obamanous, and Harley is tanking like everything else on Wall Street. I looked it up on the computer this morning, and it was down to eight bucks and change per share. Sad. That motorcycle was the greatest possession I will ever own. That stock investment paid off handsomely. HD was damn good to me. So, although I couldn't really afford it, I took a hundred bucks and invested it back in Harley Davidson inc. this morning. It wasn't much, but who knows? Good times will return sooner or later.

And I took a cruise over to the corner, grabbed a coffee, and ran into old John. He was waiting at the bus stop to go over to Trader Joes. God told someone to give him fifty bucks this morning, so we went over to TJ's to look for stuff. John found a few bottles of odd beer, and can or two of beans for cheap. I'm a sucker for their Pita Chip crackers, and I couldn't live without some cheese curds, or chocolate mochi balls.

So here I am. I got some decent munchies, and had an enjoyable afternoon. The waters muddied by the trials and tribulations of life in the world are beginning to still; the sediment is settling, and for this one moment I can see the light shining almost all the way to the bottom of my inner pond. Not so bad. Not so bad at all.

JWM

Mirrors and Treadmills

I went over to Costco Monday to pick up groceries, pills and stuff like that. The doc turned me on to a half month's supply of Plavix, which was pretty cool considering the stuff goes for over three bucks a hit, and you can't even turn a profit selling it off on the black market. The thing he gave me was some cardboard folder, cheerfully entitled Your Heart Attack Recovery Kit. It was filled with informative literature, a plastic card for the pills, and one of those government/insurance company printouts only slightly smaller than the Sunday Times: one of those oversized pages for which you need a microfiche reader, a law degree, and a doctorate in pharmacology to decipher. I think the purpose of the thing is to say, in essence, that if you kick the bucket from taking this shit it ain't their fault. Fine with me. Risk is my middle name.

But what got me was the picture on the front of the cardboard folder. It showed all these happy, glowey, and full of life seniors grinning away, as they no doubt contemplated Club Med Vacations, golf games, tri-athalons, or at least being able to live long enough (thanks to the Plavix) to blow all their money before their Gen-X grandkids could get hold of it. Still they looked like a bunch of old farts, and I found it somewhat galling to be taking old fart type pills, instead of some cooler drug like Vicodin, or Oxycontin which at least has a decent resale value should I run short of cash in the middle of the month. I mean hell- I'm only...

Oh, shit, yeah. That's right. Fifty-six.

But I had to wait for the prescription to get filled, so I pushed the SUV sized shopping cart around the warehouse grabbing the various items essential to life in the world as we know it. All of it in slightly embarrassing quantities. Thirty rolls of paper towels. The forty-five roll pack of toilet paper. Ninety six pounds of laundry soap. A side of beef, three little pigs, and a barnyard's worth of dismembered chicken parts neatly sealed in plastic blisters. I don't buy cat food at Costco, however. They have these fifty pound bags of stuff that I think they import from North Korea, or somewhere, and I hate the thought of feeding Booger the Cat, and Crabby Old Sam on recycled political prisoners, and toxic waste.

I paid a visit to the electronics section. Not a good idea. I don't even want a giant flat screen TV, despite the demo discs showing how realistic shit blowing up looks in high definition. They had some new desktop computers, but my four year old Sony PC works just fine.

But.

They have the Canon EOS digital Rebel 14mp SLR, with choice of lenses... I don't need it, can't afford it, and I know that my life is incomplete without it. I had to take it off the shelf, hold it, and pretend to look through the viewfinder at the imagined perfect shot that won't present itself to me until I break down someday and buy the damn thing. I considered how much better my timeless portrait of the Loch Ness Rabbit would have come out if only I had the thousand dollar Canon instead of the three hundred dollar Minolta. Greatness and fame were just a credit card swipe, and a signature away... Forget it. Get back to the pharmacy; get your boring damn pills, and go home.

But I had to stop and look for a second. A few people were checking out some new gizmo on some new laptop computer which I needed only slightly less than the camera. And whatdoyaknow. What they were checking out was a camera- one mounted right in the middle of the laptop lid. You could flip the computer open, and see your digital image right there in real time, live on your own private TV network.

I had to look. Bad mistake. Very bad.

We all of us look at ourselves in the mirror every day, and since we see ourselves every day we are seldom surprised by what we see. After all, your reflection at five in the afternoon isn't significantly older than the one you saw at seven that morning. But what we are used to seeing reflected in the mirror is just that- a mirror reflection, a reversed image, backward typeface version of ourselves. The image on the laptop screen was not a reflection. It was my face just as everyone else sees it. Right was right, and left was left, and the effect was startling as a son of a bitch. Talk about the old farts on the Plavix folder- Cripes, I should hope to look so good. Who was this dismal old bastard staring back at me? This computer wasn't worth a shit, I decided. No way I need it.

I got my pills, paid for the groceries, and got the hell out of there.

But today brought a brighter note. I had to go and do a treadmill test this morning at the cardiologist's. No sweat. I fried the thing. Actually did better than I did a year and a half ago. So all those grinning idiots on the Plavix folder can eat their hearts out. So what if trick photography made them look all glowey, and young. I'm sure I could kick their butts.

JWM

Browser bash

I may come up with a real post later, but for now- a question on browsers. Normally I use ie7, at least that's the version I think I have. I can depend on it to freeze up a couple of times a day. Then click the X- nothing. Right click the thing at the bottom. Repeat two or three times until the "this program is not responding" box shows up. Then the "Send error report" box needs a couple of clicks. And then I go back on line and everything's groovy until the next crash.
So I downloaded Firefox. But everything looks funky in Firefox. I set the wfb to post in Verdana, and Times shows up. The text is too small, and pushed way off to the left, and the photos are out of focus, and fuzzy looking. And I have to re-size the zoom for every site I visit. I finally got Flash to run in Firefox but it took an act of congress to get it done.
Anyway- I just got a call for work so the rest of the day is ruined. There will be no real post, and I have to go get some lunch.

JWM

Not Even Funny (so stop laughing)

I just sat down to try and improvise some sort of post for this gray and drizzly Monday when the phone rang. Since it's not quite two O' clock, there was the possibility that it could be a last minute call for the night shift, so my adrenaline level shot through the ceiling for a second. But it wasn't a call for the night shift. It was some goddamn recorded solicitation: a strident warning to visa, and master... *click*

I used to get pretty rude to phone solicitors, and let them know in no uncertain terms just how much I appreciated being interrupted to hear a sales pitch for something I neither needed, nor wanted. Sometimes they'd get pissed enough to call back for revenge. I remember one from a long time back.

*ring* "Hello?"

"May I speak with Mr.----"

"No." *click*

*ring* "Hello?"

(same voice) "Do you have to be so rude?"

"Yes." *click*

A guy I used to know had an even better tactic for revenge. He'd let them go through their whole sales pitch- lead them on, and feign interest. They'd read the whole pitch, and get right up to the point where they ask if you'd be interested in signing up for... And then he'd say, "I don't do business with telephone solicitors."

I've mellowed somewhat over the years. Anymore I just say, "No thanks." and hang up. If I'm in the middle of something I may get pissy enough to hang up without the 'no thanks', but I don't give them crap anymore. I figure anyone who's doing phone sales is probably on hard times anyway, and I don't want to add to anyone's misery any more than I can help it.

But now they've come up with this recorded message bullshit. I can't for the life of me imagine anyone staying on the line to listen, much less respond to one of these things. And I can't for the life of me figure out who thinks this might be a good way to promote their business, and so pay money to some company to record obnoxious messages, and auto-dial them to some zillions of households.

And this reminds me. Phone jokes. Prank calls. The hairy prehistoric cave man version of the internet troll. I have to admit, somewhat shamefacedly, that there was a time when I thought making prank calls was hilariously funny.

There was the unimaginative, but effective, wait until two thirty or three in the morning, dial some random number and let out a bloody murder scream in the phone.

Or the hackneyed, "This is the Edison Company; is your refrigerator running?"

"Yes."

"Then you better run after it!"

One that used to work surprisingly well was soliciting funds for the N.A.P.A.L.M. foundation; that would be the National Alliance for the Protection of the Alligator Lizard from Man. "Due to a proliferation of wild chickens in the San Dimas Canyon area, the Ringtail California Alligator Lizard is in danger of immanent extinction. Our foundation seeks donations of used clothing and canned food to combat this potential disaster..." I had the enviro-weenies down before they even existed. It was amazing how many people would listen to the pitch. Once in a while people would actually agree to leave donations on the front porch.

Or, "Hi! Wow, it's great to hear your voice! Guess who this is?"

"I don't know..."

"Awww c'mon, guess! You remember me, I just know you do!"

"Uhhhh, is this -----?"

"Yes it is! How are you? How's the family?"

"Well, they're..."

"They're all a bunch of assholes. That's what they are. And you're the biggest asshole of the bunch.."

*click*

No, it wasn't funny. And caller ID has made the prank call a thing of the past. There's no more anonymous dialing of a random number just to see if someone will pick up. Probably just as well. And I'm sure, as I sit here, that somewhere there's a kid hysterically blowing soda pop out his nose, and blasting the monitor with cheetos crumbs as he sits typing out some annoying screed for some unsuspecting blogger, or site administrator to delete. The more things change...

JWM