on working with a bunch of nimrods and other observations

the teacher i work with has been doing order of operations math problems with the students. she is a strict pemdasist. pemdas, or please excuse my dear aunt sally, stands for parenthesis exponents multiplication division addition subtraction. bg teaches this like a true totalitarian. she doesn't realize that you do the multiplication and division from left to right. to her, you strictly follow pemdas, which means you always do the multiplication first. this has led to all kinds of bizarre answers with mixed numbers. when she realizes this, she will have the class skip the problem! of course, when the problem is done correctly, you get a logical answer in the form of a whole number. i thought about telling her, but in my last attempt to change the world via my position as a lowly para, i was informed that the students have to put the 0 before the decimal, even though this has no impact on the value of the number. this is so because "this is how they learned it." of course, they only learned it that way because they were taught it that way, just as they are currently learning incorrect mathematical computations. whatever. it's all bullshit anyway.

on to history. today, we "studied" the mexican american war. the words genocide and imperialism were carefully avoided. in fact, they are concepts foreign to the feeble mentality of our hero, mc. mc, by the way, is a rudy g in 08 supporter. nothing like being the mayor of a city that had a big building destroyed to demonstrate your capability of running the most powerful nation on the history of the planet. back to the war, there were no pictures of dead civilians, and no destroyed cities were depicted. rather, mc made a point of saying that the 15 million the u.s. gave to mexico for nearly half of their territory "was a lot of money in the 1840's." ahh, the wonders of imperial north american generosity. the lesson was taught with no passion. mc seemed detached, perhaps a tad content that "we" (mc always speaks of we to describe the rich white men who took over north america at this time) achieved victory in this war. certainly, concepts like crime or conquest were absent from the discussion. when, or if, we get to world war two, he will perhaps use this kind of language to describe the actions of our enemies. meanwhile, american atrocities will be ignored, or spoken of in a bobby bland style that will invariably make me blue. the holocaust? a crime of genocide! hiroshima? a tactical decision to employ our nuclear arsenal in order to end the war and save both american and japanese lives.

god bless objectivity.

i am coming toward the end of the "extras christmas special." i have been watching it on youtube, since i wasn't able to get to the other link, proving yet again that the computer age has left me at the starting bill gates. so far, it has been a joy. gervais is a master at combining comedy and tragedy, perhaps the best at it since jackie gleason. this special is special. check it out if you have the thyme. that spelling was used for those of you still using windows 98.

the patriots are 16-0 and the celtics are 27-3. this, and the ongoing brutalization of baghdad have me in bad mood. there are a brady bunch of reasons to hate the pats. someone moss beat them or i will surely loss my mind. and while it is by no means automatic that they will beat the colts, the chance of them winning the superbowl has me in a funk that the brothers have not been able to raise me out of.

i am surrounded by mental midgets whose salary dwarfs my own. i am the foot soldier. it is not my job to question their tried and untrue methods. at least i get to leave at 2:30 and don't have to sit through meaningless meetings on new teaching methodologies. and, i am closer to the students, an odd go between on the fringes of two worlds, belonging to neither. g-d, you can use language to make anything sound powerful.

back to my world of literary illusion. i am the invisible man, hg. i am the david who went to the wells once too often. i subsist on a wage of 13:40 an hour, which i suppose means that i am not "poor." after my rent is deducted, i have about 160 dollars at the end of the month which must go to milk and music. luckily, i have a savings. ahh, life in the slow lane. i believe myself ready for a part on that new show "lifestyles of the poor and unknown."

some bumper stickers i really like...

"support our troops. we are going to need them to overthrow our government."

"at least the war on the environment is going well."

"bring back the eight hour day."

and who can forget the timeless...

"jesus hates me."

big e, that was for you. i hope no one has recently trashed your ml carr over that. funny how those guys who trumpet our rights and blab on about "freedom of speech" don't seem to mind robbing their opponents of it every chance they get.

america; your glories never cease to amaze me.