new should have been spelled knew. i was gonna correct it but decided to use it as the title of this blog

i'm not gonna lymon to frankie. that teenager needs to hear the truth. life is not always goody goody, and if that fool thinks falling in love is easy, he has another thing coming.
gave a lot of answers out today on the biology quiz. a good technique is just to point at the correct answer for a couple of seconds. another solid approach is to whisper. however, sometimes the whisper is not heard correctly, leading to frustration from the student. the opposite approach can also be used. this technique is to confirm a guess on the student's part in a loud voice. "yes, number three is the large intestine," confirms the answer for the student asking, as well as for any other students in the area. discouraging incorrect answers is always a solid tactic. "are you sure it's the heart?" will convince the student it is not the heart. you can keep doing this until they hit upon the right response. sadly, this is more time consuming than the other approaches, but can work if you are acting as a one on one aide, as opposed to a classroom aide. my favorite approach is to just go around and give answers out in a voice and tone of my choosing. "number 11 is sugar" was one that i threw around quite liberally today. no teacher has ever called me on this. i have no idea if they even know it's going on.
if we accept that school is bullshit, and rote exams which call upon memorization as opposed to learning are a fundamental aspect of said bullshit, my actions take on a new, daring, revolutionary role. for i am in the belly of the beast, and giving students answers can be a work of beauty. think of them. they feel like shit when they get a bad grade, and they feel great about themselves when they do well. i've tried to convince them that it's all bullshit, but helping them seems to be the more popular approach. this isn't new (knew?) to me. in high school, after i finished a test, i used to walk around the class and give out answers until i was kicked out the class. "yo, eight is b," spoken in a high pitched tenor while i remained seated was one of my more daring attempts at helping my fellow oppressed classmates.
schools are silly places where very little learning takes place. we should think of them as such. we should encourage young people to learn about the things that interest them, to utilize their free time, and we should attempt to expose to them, in a respectful and democratic manner, the knowledge and wisdom we have managed to gather during our lives. but school? just a glorified detention center where we memorize things.
cheating? i call it socialized learning.
peace.

dorothy, "you're" still reading closely

or, dorothy, you are still reading closely. you are the sun, you are the rain. lionel got ritchie (rich) from that song. just so you know, it is hard to get an editor at my salary (celery, salari, so larry). you see, it is the brilliant thoughts, the one of a kind genius, the unique creativity, that you should all remember, not a word hear and there. (that should have been here, you hear?) this blog may be going down the you tube, judging by these paper clips. are we really so starved for entertainment? this is all so camp. this concentration of puns is almost too much, even for me. well, jew (you) do what jew (you) gotta do, and when in roma (rome), do what the roma (rome) do. furthermore, remember to be gay (gaye) all the while, for you are a yellow star, jones. i would love to chew the fat (phat) with you, but i am going to have to by (buy, bye)pass on giving you my view for the time being. to that, you will probably say "whoppi!" which is as good as goldberg. i don't care, cey (say) what you have to. but just remember; you can ron (run) but you can't hyde (hide), mr (miss, mrs, mister, sir), because where ever you vengco (go), i'll be there to carey (carry) the load with tom laundry (landry). and then, we will take a math class with mr. cao (cow), boy because we are upward bound. just wear (where) your jean (gene)ammons pants, and speak your piece (peace) as if you had a mike (mic) in your hand.
let us drink the buble, michael. don't wine and complain, for you can rum but you can't hide, so just gin and beer it. there i go a gin, about to take that ride with sally again, because i didn't have the will,son to take the daye off and picket. i felt fenced in. thoughts of having 2 and a half kids merged with watching 8 and a half, so i compromised and watched 2 men and went to the gap and got a bebe coat of paint which i used to clean up eddie house's language. he struck a tender posey, so i didn't have to get a posse after that pussy. he did tell me i was a little pushy for telling him that i thought he lived too poshy. as danit woman would say "whatever". once i went to herr house with james, but i didn't diggs it, so i gave deondrae a call. his phone was busy. he tells me his phone is always busy. just yesterday, it did the dishes.

mitt romney defended his mormon faith yesterday. they say it was his best speech yet. does that say anything?
don't dog steve kerr. he was a good shooter, and a cool cat to boot. he often sneaked up on the competition. he was also a nice guy to converse with. even the all stars enjoyed his conversation. then, when it was reggie miller time, he new how to pacer himself and to drink responsibly. a lot of bucks were wasted on these spurs of the moment night outs, which would nets bars quite a bit of money. they would be there until the suns would rise. they would flock to each other like hornets, and hold each other in raptor like attention. and they were always patriots. when the rockets would red glare, their eyes would david wells up, and they would be receptive to any and all military strikes planned by our leaders. to them, war was a ball, that they would catch on the evening news while they relaxed at home run. they managed to ignore the brutality, the cluster bombs, the genocide. they were cheerleaders, they martha rooted for the home team. "we will win" they said "for we are on god's side" moses that if we just left people malone, maybe things wood get better in the nick of time. but no, said the other players, for we would rather keep dropping kirshbaum's on people. that is the mark price our permissive society must pay, for we must remember that god created adam and eve, not atom and steve. what has science attained for us? we need to keep our ion the prize, and remember that you can not cell the important things. life will often intestine us in both small and large ways. life is filled with testes, but can be a real lucille ball if you learn how to esther rolle with the punches. just remember to not act like a dick, don't drive a van, and don't become a dyke. the u.s. bombed the dykes during the korean war. this was not a gay time for the korean people. it was a war crime. but there was no nuremberg for us, no trials, no one remembers, no one intones "never again."
lenny bruce once said that "if we lost world war two, truman would have been strung up by his balls." cross out truman and put in all of our leaders since, and the line still works. bruce also said, in the voice of a german war criminal on trial, "do you think you are superior because you burned your enemies from long distance without having to see what you did?"
i don't think bruce was really persecuted for saying "cocksucker," do you?
we are all on the reservation now.
except for those rich white assholes who are still running the show.
welcome to ground hog's day.

critical ass

on the last friday of each month, a lot of young men are on the look out for "critical ass." you don't need a vikki carr, or antoine carr, or truck robinson. you can bettis your life that you won't need a bus to get to critical ass. for it is indeed critical that all of us get ass once in a while. it's a good release. sinatra's recording of learning the blues was also a good release. please release me let me go, sang englebert and ernie. the two would often walk down this sesame street, but the pavement always stood beneath their feet before. did enchantment pour out of every door, or was that a sea of poor people? when it rains it poors, leaving us rich with water. i want to condensation these remarks but i didn't know what to autumn leaves out. since you've been gone, the leaves drift down my freda payne, and i don't feel o kahlo. the autumn leaves are red and a band of gold, and if you look closely, you can get a supremes view of them in motown. i wanted to diego there, and sit by the rivera. with a carribean queen on my arm, i would glide clyde to clyde gently along the ocean, as dinah and me would serenely look out upon the shore.
but greg, i must turn the page, for i think i see an uncle pinklon thomas coming, and i don't want him to hear me. i don't have much fight left, for life is a billy conn job, and if you don't have those grants like horace, it is a tough game to ed wynn. if i only had a heart, maybe things would be different. ahh, why am i lion. oz know it would still suck. at least i have dorothy's comments to green eggs and ham me on. of shakespeare's plays, i like green eggs and hamlet the best, travis. i thought i would springfield that at you out of the phil woods, and make a mclean break for it.
9/11 truth people (aka conspiracy nuts. count basie me in) are going to be throwing tea into the boston harbor. the thing is, it's cold out, and i could use a glass of tea! couldn't they just throw prune juice in? who would know the difference? bush blew up the towers. bin laden didn't blow up the projects. it's like halloween when kids go egging. what a waste of food! people are starving and you are buying dozens of eggs to throw at trains and cars and other people who happen to be walking down the block? what are we, mental midgets? (what is it with this guy and rhetorical questions? there he goes again! now it's exclamation points. when will it end? well, at least he's back to question marks. good, a period. finally, some normal punctuation around here. if they knew what i would end up using my englisg degree for.) yes, i know, i spelled english incorrectly. just checking to make sure you are still reading closely.
think about this. we work, not for the essentials of life, but for pieces of paper that can get us these essentials. (and sadly, a lot of crap too, like i pods and sex orgies) why not just cut out the middle man? we all know that money is the martha root and the vandellas of all evil. maybe if i knock on nick wood, money will go away, let me be, i don't want to see you anymore, because you'll hurt me like you hurt me before ("go away" from jackie wilson's obscure 1973 album "beautiful day." it was the 3rd track on the record, following "beautiful day" and "because of you" the "because of you" was not the old standard made popular by tony bennett, which my dad sung at the age of 7, but dan rather, a jumpy r and b tune, similar to the spinners and warwick's "then came you.") i'm sure you will find that info vitally significant as you go through life.
there, i did my good deed for the bobby darin daye.
i'm outta here.

4 comments? wow!

by the way, "i am the scottsboro boys" was an awesome comment! thank you for digging my ginsberg reference. some may che it was only a fidel castro ruz to induce such a comment, but i truly felt that it ended the blog nicely. that's how i feel. i am not going to beat around george h. w. bush's vice president, who was no jack kennedy. however, he did resemble john kennedy. jack woker me up to tell me that line, and then we listened to records on his stereo. happiness is just a thing called jo stafford, i thought, as i heard the clear sounds of standards, which made me remember april in rebecca paris, autumn in new york, and mooning in vermont. don't let the holy ghost catch you crying, ray charles said. he then asked "am i blue mitchell?" i told him no, you are ray charles, one of the stevie wonder's of the world, and you have been george shearing the joy of music with us for decades. we are lucky to live in your orbison, for everytime we are al hurt, you make us feel better. david feels like a newman everytime your records are played. once, we even convinced him to hit the abbey road with jack kennedy, but he had a woman named helen way over town, and didn't want to travel. i thought that whether helen was reddy or not, that newman was a man and his roar should have been garfield heard. he should have taken a shot. instead, he stayed home for short money, and was forced to work overtime, getting up each morning before the phoenix suns would rize. he would practically dance out of bed for his morning meal of chips and salsa, and a glass of paul newman's mango tango. luke meanwhile, was a real hustler who would always play his hand nice and cool. somebody up there may have liked him, for he was always finding items at tony's department store on zale. once, he was caught robinson the store of some sugar. there was a ray of hope that they would let it pass, in an attempt to unitas as a community, for any johnny come lately can steel. after an attempt to iron out the arrangement, which proved to be a real riddle, we settled for thyme served. we settled on the earlier spelling, which made it seem as if he had actually spent some time in prison. i don't mean to pry, son, but richard, he didn't have a pryor record, and in any case, prison is for the larry birds. it has no place in a society filled with david justice. in prison, you are likely to get your cher, sonny, of dick johnson, as there are a lack of sonny stitt recordings in prison libraries. perhaps a good stitt in movement could begin to correct this heinous injustice. perhaps if i made a personal appearance at some prisons around the nation, they would begin to tim stack their libraries with his recordings. however, i feel that i am caught between the devil and the deap blue sea, because i never knew how much red garland tape you have to go through in order to make a difference. dinah, what a difference a day made when i went to washington and actually came face to face with and met the press. the curruption, the ineptitude! g-d. but, i made a difference. stan getz it.
do you?

hrsnnzrgwhnrmhavwbsrgn

at work yesterday with the kids, politics came up. "how much longer will bush be in power?" a girl asks. till january of 2009, i respond. "crap, we will all be dead by then," she exclaims. i respond that while bush has killed a lot of people, i'm sure some of us will still be alive at that time. this draws a glare from the teacher in the room. for a split second, we are like hagler and hearns, staring each other down in the center of the ring. and then, she looks away. the girl tells me she wants hillary to win because she "will mess with all the men." i ask, "what of barack obama?" (i figured she wasn't a big kucinich booster) she goes "who? isn't that one of the guys who blew up the twin towers?" i calmly explain his father was a black kenyan and his mom a white woman from kansas. is he "one of those people?" the girl wants to know, images of bearded fellows obviously flowing through her mind. this girl, by the way, is a senior in high school. she is a likeable young girl, stylish, a cute sense of humor. sadly, she is also an american. ignorance and political illiteracy are a fundamental aspect of our lives. why should she be any different? she wants hillary. she can't tell you why. maybe just because she is a "girl," just as we root for the home team in sports. life is a brand choice, a video game, a product for us to consume. remember how bush was the "regular guy," the guy that "you could have a beer with?" now, kucinich is "too short," he's a vegan in a land of meat eaters, his wife is 30 years younger than he is. so what if he has good ideas? what do ideas matter? yes, he was right about the war in iraq, but who cares? he is not electable. why, because we are told he isn't. just as nader wasn't, or sharpton wasn't, or henry wallace wasn't, or george mcgovern wasn't, or dick gregory wasn't.
the message is good things can't happen in our culture. people with decent ideas, who believe in peace and redistributing wealth and ending racism can't ascend to positions of power. if true, what does that say about our society? and, if true, then by what right can we call ourselves a democracy? is it a democracy that elects clean shaven, right wing stick figures who claim to be religious for fear of alienating voters? is it a democracy where our leaders are hand picked by media and corporate powers? is it a democracy when our two major parties practice a brutal, bipartisan foreign policy, and have been doing so for generations?
well, you may say, i have the freedom to complain to a blank screen and to have my thoughts read by a few outcasts. if it's so bad, you may say, why don't i leave? do you have a ticket you can give me? could you pay for my movers? could you get me free language lessons? could you get me a job in my country of choice? could you convince my loved ones to move with me? no? then shut the fuck up then.
god bless america

lonely is a man with wisdom

i saw ralph nader speak at boston university last night. a tad hitchcock angrier than usual, nader hit all the right notes. he implored the students to become engaged citizens. his biting wit seemed to fly above their heads however. at one point, he spoke to the very real possibility of the reinstitution of the draft as something that should obviously concern the students. he told us that this time, the draft will come "without gender discrimination." i smirked, drawing a confused stare from a fellow audience member. there was no reaction that i could discern. nader's point was a powerful one. a world where all of us have an equal right to kill doesn't do much for those under the bombs. it brings to mind the celebration of forgotten black korean war veterans at umass boston several years back. these men wanted "credit" for what they had done. i suggested the symposium be entitled "we killed people too." at least i got a couple of laughs.
another of nader's high points came when he strongly reminded the audience that this administration has committed the most significant international crime; namely, a war of aggression. but, as he told us, "we were too busy watching american idol to do anything about it." (dolittle was robbed) this time, i at least heard myself laughing.
i commend nader for soldiering on. he still has much to say, but his audience sadly seems to be shrinking. in a school of tens of thousands, only a couple of hundred people came to hear him. he is one of the great men of our time, and yet, continues to be pounded over his 2000 push for the presidency. was nader's campaign in 2000 the nadir of his career? i say nay, dear. it was an energetic campaign that helped bring millions of young idealists into electoral politics, and it exposed people to a plethora of ideas that would have been silenced by the traditional political parties. it was the best progressive third party run for presidential power since henry wallace's run in 1948. wallace's character was also brutally assassinated. to learn more about wallace, read frank (a liberal) kofsky's book on his run for the presidency.
nader has nothing to apologize for. rather, it is we, the american people, who should be apologizing to him for not voting him into office. furthermore, we should apologize for the smears against his character by those who call themselves progressives. people like gitlin and alterman should beg forgiveness for the gutless attacks they have directed against nader.
in an age of reaction, nader dared to be progressive. we should honor his work by building a better society and not settling for this two party dictatorship that does the bidding of corporate and military power, and not the people.

thoughts: i am tired of 6 year old girls with cell phones. if families have that much money that their brat children can have cell phones, they should be donating their money to those who don't have a roof over their heads, much less a phone.

the american people are a fearful, ignorant, apathetic bunch of selfish assholes. try getting a movement for change going with those beliefs.

i work and work and work. and at the end of the month, i have lost money. it doesn't seem fair, does it? if you are not rich in this country, or at least, comfortably middle class (remember them?) your life is a circular trip to nowhere consisting of work, paying bills, and bitching. i need the latter of these activities, but i could do without the other two.

near downtown boston, their is a holocaust memorial. funny, but i didn't see any indian names.

work's greatest crime? it gets in the way of my (our) doing nothing. you show me a man doing nothing, and i'll show you someone who is not dropping bombs on people.

motivation is overrated. hitler was motivated.

that moment when you really have to pee and you go is one of the great feelings you can have, ain't it? i also like a good shit on a fall day. i realize i am treading on controversial turf here, but a good shit is a happening. come on, admit it!

suicide is underrated. it takes courage to kill yourself and end this farce known as life.

suicide bombers are not cowards. they know they can't hang with us in a conventional military sense, so they are doing what they have to do. when an algerian general was asked by a french journalist "why do you hide bombs in baby carriages," he replied "you give us your planes and we will give you our baby carriages." since we are probably not shipping a supply of b-2 bombers with cluster bombs and napalm to al qaeda anytime soon, this kind of thing will probably continue. if we want it to end, perhaps we should stop terrorizing the planet, pay reparations, and apologize for our genocidal actions. (is their a candidate running saying these things?) just a thought.

somewhere over the rainbow, i can see judy running through a garland of flowers. (an old time pun for the faithful.) i have a long faith hill to climb, but i haven't given up my elmo hope cd yet.

hang in, my reader(s?) it can't get any worse.

can it?

smash your tv and complaining is what i do best

saturday night on tv; law and order. just what nixon said we needed. yeah, let's clear the streets of those long hairs and black militants. on this particular show, a confession is gained by a member of the police force grabbing a suspect by the neck and threatening to break it. understandably, the suspect confesses. the police man than walks away in a fury. no one is there to tell us that the cop just committed an act of torture, and that the confession is therefore useless. right now, someone is being tortured in a similar way, except it is for real. it may be a young black man in a prison in chicago, or an iraqi in baghdad. shows like this make such treatment seem normal, acceptable, a part of what is. once something is seen as a part of the culture, whether it is thought of as good or not, it is that much harder to question and therefore, to remove from our culture. hence a society that emphasizes violence, torture, and general brutality will have a culture that normalizes these behaviors. it almost doesn't even matter whether the actions are criticized, for they have been made normal, and are now with us, like breathing.
this man will not be fired from the police staff. the next show will not start with a long explanation of how deplorable his behavior was. on the contrary, the man "did what he had to do." he didn't fight "with one hand tied behind his back." a nation of rambos has no time for decency, for restraint, for true law and order. true law and order would apply to the police too. it would apply to the military too. aren't the nuremberg laws "law and order?" law and order was never meant to restrain the power structure. they are allowed to act in a state of complete lawlessness. and we know that tv will be there, every step of the way, to make all of this seem right. and we will be watching.
it's not real, is it? it's real to the people being tortured into confessions. it's real to mumia and leonard peltier and the jena 6 and the surviving move members and the panthers still in prison and to those who lost loved ones in waco. power without restraint is all too real for iraqi children. everything that permeates the culture is real, for once an image exists, it is a part of the totality of possible behaviors and responses that make up our world. a german movie during the 1930's filled with anti-semitism and anti-socialism would be "real", would it not? it would be real for what it says about nazi germany, just like the products of our cinema and television speak to what our society is about. but alas, we are always one step behind. we can clearly see the horrors of the past, while we busily create their modern equivalents.
later, on mad tv, a black slave run away slave with one leg missing has been added to "the wizard of oz." a funny spoof perhaps? well, maybe you would find this funny; an imprisoned jew from a german concentration camp has been added to a spoof of the wizard of oz. he is emaciated, skin sunk into his chest, bones protruding, and singing. the tune? "if i only had some food." is this funny? if not, i ask this; why do we as a culture feel comfortable to joke about the heinous crimes within our own past? i realize there was an element in the sketch where they were mocking the racist portrayals of the past, but are we really so advanced that we can sit back and serenely mock past cultural manifestations? look around. we ain't doing so great.
a quick word on sports. i am tired of the national fixed league and the national bullshit association. did anyone see that pats game last night? defensive holding? please. we all know these games are fixed, and yet we tune in, night after night. we give up thousands of hours from our life for this crap. at least the harlem globetrotters and the wwf are honest about being dishonest. bad calls come back to me, inundate me. game six, lakers-kings. bibby fouls koby's elbow with his face. robert horry flops, and a webber hook shot is erased. or how about jabbar missing a hook shot in 1988 that would have sealed the title for the pistons, only to be put on the line, keeping the lakers alive? need we speak of the "tuck rule," allowing the pats to move on and eventually capture their 1st title? or what of the superbowl a couple of years ago between the seahawks and the steelers, where everything possible was done to make sure the steelers won? and how about a little history. the year is 1962, and it is game seven between the celtics and the then philadelphia warriors. late in the game, wilt blocks a heinsohn hook shot at least 10 feet (some have said even 15 feet) away from the basket. no matter, goaltending is called. the celtics go on to win by 2 points, and win yet another title when they beat the lakers in the next round. or, how about game five of the mavs-heat a couple of years ago, where wade missed a shot that would have sealed a crucial victory for the mavs. instead, he receives a phantom call, and the heat win. or, how about robert parish punching bill lambeer to the floor? no foul is called, no ejection is made. the ref "didn't see it." it is game 5. later, bird will go on to steal the ball and dj will score the winning bucket. the c's win by one point, and win the series in 7 games. parish is suspended for the following game, but not before the three blind mice (or was it still two then) have yet again impacted a series.
believe me, i could go and on. from pop warner to high school to the pros, games are routinely rigged. sometimes it is because of the spread, sometimes because "they" (the league, the "system", the individual ref,) just want one team to beat another, and sometimes they just don't want individual players to do well. does anyone remember how darryl dawkins was never allowed to play, often getting 3 fouls in a matter of a couple of minutes? meanwhile, moses malone would man handle the league, and never foul out of a game. dawkins could seemingly do nothing right, according to the zebras. his career was like the cuban revolution; we will never know how great he could have been because of his treatment by those in power. even so, he made some noise.
everything is bullshit in this culture.
even sports.
and we keep watching, because there ain't nothing else to do.
life can really suck.
peace.