Thursday, October 26, 2006

The Dog Who Loved to Suck on Toads

Monday, October 23, 2006

Goals My Department Chair Would Not Let Me Put on My Continuous Improvement Plan

1) Achieve a State of Transcendant Grace

2) Stab a Student in the Eyelid With a Freshly Sharpened Pencil and Get Away With It

3) Reduce Failures by Having Failing Students Fight to the Death

4) Conquer and Enslave the Weaker Departments

5) Stop the Imminent Canadian Invasion of America by Demoralising My Canadian Students

6) Generate Revenue for the Department by Making my Classes into a French-Translation Sweatshop

7) Build and Test a Historically Accurate, Working Guillotine and "Simulate" the Reign of Terror

8) Develop an Award-Winning Blog

9) Teach Myself and the French Club to Appreciate French Wine

10) Get More in Touch with My Feminine Side

11) Become the Quickest Teacher in Steamboat County

12) Have the French Club Sponsor Me at Bowling Green

13) Choose the Assistant Principal to be Sent into Space

14) Conduct Extensive Research on Ebay Economics

15) Achieve a 95th %ile score on the LSAT and Get the Hell Out

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

I Want to be a Nutball Commie Dictator.

Everybody knows that Kim Jong Il claims to have exploded a nuclear weapon and they are all getting their collective panties in a wad about it. The Official World View is that he is some kind of Nutball, frequently indicated in the Western media by references to his "platform shoes" and "bouffant hairstyle."

Huh. I don't think that having a "bouffant hairstyle" or "platform shoes" are clear indicators of insanity, although they do go some distance towards explaining the '70's. I think part of the privilege of being a shunned commie dictator is that you can wear whatever the hell you want. If I were a commie dictator, I would wear platform BOOTS, especially the kind that go clip-clop, and as bouffanty a hairstyle as possible. MY hair would be practically a beehive, or some long spiky mohawky thing. He's got some kind of fabulousness going, but he needs to ditch the huge wire rim glasses for some huge plastic frame glasses, preferably in bright red, a la Sally Jessy Raphael, and wear less drab clothing.

I really don't get the he-so-crazy part. He's actually a better dresser than Fidel Castro with his two-larks-and-a-hen beard, and he looks sort of better than, say, Saddam Hussein did in his questionable glory days. I really don't think he's as nuts as some people think he is. Yes, he has nuclear (I should have a television just to hear Bush say, in Eisenhowerese, nucular) weapons, but that's, um, his bargaining tool to keep getting China and everybody else to give him money. It makes sense. Here you are, the bouffant haired, platform shod, opera writing dictator of a country in which people eat tree bark- if he were African, he would be eating them a la Idi Amin and his people would be killing each other, so you have to say he must be doing something right.

I'm not really concerned about the nucular weapon thing, actually; I'm more concerned about the fact that North Korea doesn't export anything, except for counterfeit US currency, and that can only get you so far before people really don't believe in your money anymore. You may not have noticed this, because only really old and sort of crazy people like my mother only pay for things with cash anymore, and money they've hidden around the house in odd places over the years at that, so they haven't seen how our currency has degenerated. But money has gotten really f*d up. It's now strange colours, like barfed-up smarties, and has random things printed on it, like "We the People." I honestly would not have accepted the last $10 bill I got, except that I got it from SunTrust and made the cashier promise (I kid you not) that it was real, and I could go spend it. Y'all, American money is supposed to be ONE colour, GREEN, and say only the things it is supposed to say on it, like the Ten Dollar Bill is supposed to have, on the back, the Treasury with the little car in front of it. OK? And the dollar is supposed to have the pyramid with the eye over it, OK? So the point to this is that I am much more concerned with this Kim Jong Il person f*cking with our cash than I am with his nucular weapons (say it like Bush, isn't that fun? Nucular. Nucular!) This guy could make us print money with practically ANYTHING on it, like Europe does where they have "windows and bridges" on their money. Next week we'll take Andrew Jackson off of the 20 and substitute Rosa Parks and put a bus on the back and make it rainbow coloured, and it will say, How do you spell relief? R-o-l-a-i-d-s.

I also don't think we have much to worry about because he hasn't started demanding, as far as I know, really off-the wall things. He says, and this makes sense to me, Look! I have a nucular weapon! Give me money, and food, or I will use it on you! I bet Castro is all envious, because the best he can do for support is that equally tinpot dictator from Venezuela.

I wish I were a Commie Dictator, and I could have huge airbrushed pictures of myself everywhere, and, like Kim Jong Il, I would also write operas. Ewww, can you imagine what an opera sounds like in Korean? I would write operas like To the Eternal Glory of the Woggy Husband! and Lo! Shine Forth the Revolutionary Struggle of the Woggy Husband! and Ha ha Americans! We are Making Your Money Look Stupid and You Can't Stop Us! and Let Every Brother of this Country Be as Valiant in Bed as the Woggy Husband!

They would have songs like this, only we would sing them in a foreign language so that they would rhyme and not sound too stupid.

How glorious is the Woggy Husband!
He is all brown and soft! His skin is like the finest silk!
His muscles are like big rocks!
Oh! The Woggy Husband's head is fuzzy!
And woolly, like a soft and gentle sheep!
His laugh is like the soft chuckling of the buck!

And there would be lots more like that, several hours worth. And I would make people dance and do gymnastics too, or I would feed them to my crocodiles.



Monday, October 09, 2006

Woe is Me! I Am All Black and Roasted!

The above line was the Highlight of the Opera we went to see on Saturday. Trey, like half of the audience including myself, thought that was even funnier than the rubber chicken in Pagliacci, and we howled with laughter.

If you are wondering why there would be such a line in an opera, it is from "Carmina Burana" which is not really an opera, but whatever. This was supposed to be spoken by a swan, so there was some sort of light projection on the stage, with swan cut outs. This swan's killing was represented on the light projection, but in an ?unfortunately? comic way- I put question marks around the unfortunately because if the audience took it as seriously as it was meant to be taken, it would have been much too heavy. So instead, it was ludicrous. The swan in question was killed, roasted and eaten, and then somehow managed to sing about it. I wonder if the chicken that I cooked yesterday would have sung about being cooked. I wonder what sort of drugs one has to take to hear your food singing while it is being cooked; that sounds like the sort of thing that would make one really bonkers. Or, conversely, the sort of thing that happens to the really bonkers. I now have some idea of what Trey is going to be like when he gets to be really old, with, as he puts it, Old Timer's disease.

At any rate, we had decent seats, which is not always the case at the damn Civic Center; next year the opera is moving to somewhere in Cobb County. If the seats are a decent price, I think I'll buy season tickets again. Wherever they're moving to has to be better than the Civic Center.

The first opera was Pagliacci, which is apparently too short to be all by itself, so that was why Carmina Burana was also featured. I thought the female lead in Pagliacci was miscast; she didn't seem vixenish enough and was more timid and afraid than really the Bad Woman she should have been. Other than that it was really good.

O and something else happened this weekend, and because the people who were involved are among the three people who read this, I am only going to touch lightly on it. But I will say that we love you, support you, and God does too. No problem is bigger than Jesus. If people who are infinitely silly can make it, surely two well respected, intelligent, hard working, committed people can make it.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Eurythmas List

It's time for me to make the List of Things I Would Like to Receive for Eurythmas, which can be viewed at http://www.ain. Let's be realistic. The likelihood that I am going to receive what I want and deserve for Eurythmas is close to that of, say, Pauly Shore (sorry, Ed told me to scratch that, and he's right; substitute Robin Williams) making a movie not used to induce vomiting. Yes, readers, I would continue the tradition of buying my own Eurythmas presents and pretending they are from someone else but we don't have any money again so that isn't a possibility either.

I think that I should threaten y'all with becoming Jehovah's Witnesses. Then we wouldn't be allowed to celebrate any holidays anymore; that would solve the problem. Perhaps this possibility strikes you as so distasteful that you are willing to buy me whatever I want just so that I don't become a Jehovah's Witness. You know, I COULD knock on your door VERY early Saturday morning and demand conference about entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven. Trey could also do this. Even more so, perhaps we could start an organisation of GAY Jehovah's Witnesses, like the Gay Catholics, and knock on your door very early Saturday morning in DRESSES. Think about it carefully. Remember friends, Gin really isn't all that expensive.

I would like:

A large bottle of Gin.

A boxed set of John Waters movies on DVD.

At least 1.75 litres of Citadelle Gin.

A "Krazy Kat" album.

A pressure Canner.

A Year of Magical Thinking

Did I mention Gin?

Kirban's body braces for my car. www.kirbanperformance.com

Those little struts that hold up the hood and are worn out.

A nice set of floor mats which have the turbo 6 logo on them. (And if you could include a large bottle of Gin, that would just be super; I could get really tanked and thrust my floor mats in everyone's faces and insist you admire them. This is better than other things I could thrust in your face and insist that you admire while really tanked)

Some chrome bits to make my car all shiny under the hood.

A new crank sensor.

A Roach Death ray, that will really kill the roaches in our house. Like a phaser, or that death ray that the Martians had in the good (original) War of the Worlds, because nothing else kills the roaches. Y'all, I even broke down and bought spray and sprayed. And do you know what happened? That spray makes me cough and I have to wear that mask while spraying it? The roaches just laugh and think it's some new kind of cocktail. Some of the roaches live inside the IRON. They can live inside the iron while it's ON and all hot and burning things. They live inside the DISHWASHER. They live in the stove and come out to see what is cooking and dance around. I keep squashing them. They multiply. It's really gross, even worse than the dead rat Trey wrapped in newspaper and put underneath the sink. Perhaps, if you gave me an extra large bottle of gin, then I could feed the roaches the gin, and they would get, like, cirrhosis of their little roach livers and die? And be tempted to smoke little tiny cigarettes, and drive drunk?

Opal Jewelry, as in a large, glittery Opal ring.

A GNX dash.

A replacement for my nice Advantix camera which Trey got stolen out of his car.

Whatever the latest season of "King of the Hill" on DVD is.

I still would like the entire Eurythmics boxed set, but that's unlikely as well. Sigh.

Minions.

The makings of several good martinis- on the rocks, with olives.

Things People Say.

Last week Trey wanted to know why I was throwing away some Kroger coupons.

They've expired, I said.

Why are they sending us expired coupons? he demanded, angrily . . .

And this week:
I want to go hiking through Germany, for three or four days, he said, because the nature is more advanced in Europe . . .

I hope you don't go to Marihuana and Cocaine and Heroin parties when you are a lawyer, worried my mother. You don't know what it could be like, she said, deeply concerned, you could be in one of those grand hotels and then someone just says would you like to snort some marihuana or shoots you up with some cocaine. . . You just never know what could happen.

And from- have you ever heard the saying, the empty barrel makes the most noise? Not only does this girl have to have really stupendously idiotic ideas, she has to broadcast them at the top of her voice-: No one speaks English fluently, she announced, except for maybe Webster, he the smartest man in the world, he the next Bill Gates. In the same breath she asked us "What do you call a flying cow? A Dairy queen!

We were discussing activities in the country. I have friends that live in the country, I said, they have deer and turkeys and shoot them. Next time, we're going to shoot skeet.

Aww, said a girl in the front row, genuinely concerned for the skeet, that's so cruel.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Scandalous!

Possibly one of the few really bright spots in the news recently has been that Mark Foley and his IM Scandal. (courtesy of ABC News) You all are instructed to inform yourselves as fully as possible about this very amusing scandal, because the sort of things that the (former) congressman is alleged to have IM'ed are eeeewwweyy in an amusing manner, much like watching a bucket of slime fall on someone else. I am all full of some long German word which means joy-from-witnessing-someone-try-pathetically-to-score-with-someone-completely-out-of-their-league, like when Steve was trying to hit on Cathy. "You can stay in my bed,' he offered. Cathy somehow graciously declined. Ha ha! It's so GROSS to read what this congressman wrote!

But semi-seriously, I am beginning to doubt the veracity of some of the material. If someone, let's put it frankly, yucky and old hit on me like that, I would not encourage them as this "teenager" seems to have done. I can't imagine, as a teenager, having had a conversation with a 52 year old congressman about spanking the monkey. No. If someone, say, a teacher, had sent me this kind of message, I would have been very disgusted. I should think my students would be as well. Especially the sort of student that becomes a page in Congress; one expects that they would be well connected, popular, smart, and successful, not vulnerable loners who have sexual conversations with an ancient lech.

I think that some of these conversations are somewhat manipulated, as in the sense of I don't really think his correspondent was a teenage page, or the teenage page was given instructions on what to say in order to lead the congressman to say something embarrassing. There's a series of oddities here that to my jaundiced eye, add up to something a little more than a yucky old man in an internet-era raincoat. These conversations occured in 2003, and they're just now appearing? And this 17 year old, or the parents, saved them? If they felt this was a problem, why didn't they come forward in 2003? 17 year old kids can't be counted on to reliably bring their books to class every day, so the notion that the kid saved the IMs- not buying it. How convenient they should appear A) in an election year and B) just before the election, so close that they can't get Foley's name off of the ballot and this gets rid of a congressman in an otherwise safe seat, thus potentially tipping the balance of power in Congress. I'm also wondering why he abruptly resigned. Ok, the messages he sent were definitely repulsive. But I don't see any evidence of any actual ILLEGAL behaviour, unless- there's more to the story than we know about. So the guy liked to talk dirty to cute younguns. That's not really a crime. Perhaps he actually did something with a page. How many bases did he get to with the teenagers?

I think the alleged victims have some responsibility in all this as well. By this age if you are responsible enough to serve as a page and live off in a dorm, you have enough sense to fend off the advances of Doc Oc. I can't call him a kid, because he really isn't- and he seems to be encouraging the man, which I again seriously doubt any actual 17 year old would do, so - I feel some sympathy for the lot of them, especially Foley's dermatologist husband of 19 years.

I really think there is a little too much hay being made out of this, especially in light of the fact that people like William Jefferson are still in office. One thing to the Republicans' credit, I suppose, is that when they have someone in office who breaks their code of ethics, they are GONE. They don't allow them to linger around like Marion Barry, or Cynthia McKinney, or Ted Kennedy, or Bill Clinton to stink up their offices. They don't make excuses for them. (No, Bush is NOT ethically challenged. That's another debate) If this had happened on the other side of the aisle, there would have been no resignation, no condemnation, nothing but excuses.