on the gig

j has a hat of the virgin mary. on the hat, there are two buttons. one reads "class clown." the other one says "fuck the government." he often breaks into song or dance. furthermore, he usually ends up in shouting matches with one of the girls in the class, one of whom tells him to "shut the fuck up."

k is always late to class, but wants to join the army. he claims he wants to fight, but can often be seen running away from classmates chasing him down the hall.

a recently became offended that the teacher wouldn't turn the lights off while they took notes, even though the words were easy to see. he used this as an excuse to exit the class in dramatic fashion..."man, all we want to do is turn off the fucking lights! yo, that's bullshit. i'm out of here."

m does no work, and then gets all the answers right on his test, despite the fact that he showed no work. he claims that he did it all in his head, even though the problems had several steps which he had no clue of the day before. on the first day, this same student, a freshman, looked me in the eye, and stated with great seriousness, "college is going to be hard." then, when the teacher began to move the desks, he said angrily, pointing to the sign in the room, "please do not move the desks." of course, the teacher was the person who had put the sign up.

a new aide was hired. p met him, and said "must think of john stories, john stories." today, he informed us that john was in world war 2, and that he spent time in holland fighting kevin, who was a nazi. today, p also looked up and out of nowhere, said "gary payton?"

we are fighting 2 wars, the economy is going to shit, millions are poor and uninsured, but you would never know it judging by the banalities that pass for conversation at my job. never mind the classes. g-d help us.

palin recently said that we have won in iraq.

a classmate of tixon's recently said that we are in iraq to "bring change." yes, blowing up a country certainly does constitute change. it is a change to go from electricity to not having it, to go from clean drinking water to lacking it, and to go from a quality health care system to a nonexistent one. all of this and more qualifies as change. and that brings to mind 9/11. didn't those planes "bring change" to the wtc? one minute it was standing, the next minute it wasn't. now that's what i call the kind of change that americans usually love. that is, when they are the ones instituting it.

the average white american, and many of his nonwhite side kicks, will never give up the notion of america as an essentially great place, that tries to do good all the time. sadly, they gave up believing in santa claus, and held on to this far more dangerous view. they argue that we do our best to bring freedom and democracy to each and every corner of the globe. to quote a blum title, we are quite good at "freeing the world to death."

and remember, each person we kill is payback for 9/11, including the 2 million vietnamese.

it's called a preemptive strike.